I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

5|hap |°PPi8M l\ f o 

£ 

| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE TRUTHS 



OF 



Religion and the Bible i 



AS SEEN BY THE 



LIGHT OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 



BY 



^WILSON, A. M., 

AUTHOR OF " PHRASIS," "ERRORS OF GRAMMAR," "CONDUCT 

OF LIFE," ETC. 



NEW YORK: lO.qQfc 

1874. -A 



-11 r 



Entered according to Act of Congress, m the year 1874, 
BY J. WILSON, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern 

District of Ne\r York. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The aims and purposes of the author, and his peculiar concep- 
tions in matters of truth and religion, can be set forth in a very few 
words. To wade through the whole book to find them, would be 
quite unnecessary. They can be fairly developed in the brief pages 
of this simple introduction. After that has been digested, the 
reader can better decide whether the work would be«apt to justify 
his perusal; and should he finally decide to follow the writer 
in his rough and devious ways, he will find the journey less 
monotonous, when he knows whither every step tends and just 
why it is taken. It is perhaps proper, in concluding this paragraph, 
to explain why the pronoun "I" is used, as the author proposes, 
instead of the more fashionable, and no doubt more modest, 
monosyllabic "we." This book is meant to be merely the plain 
talk of a candid inquirer with such thinking people as may be so 
kind as to listen to him. It his intention to indicate merely what 
he himself thinks, and to state simply how things appear to his 
vision. To use the pronoun "we" might imply that he wishes to 
hold others responsible for such thoughts as he might utter, and 
that would be the farthest of all things from his intention. Hence 
the use of the only monosyllable that will place beyond all doubt 
this fact, that he wishes to compromise no other person by the 
strange things he may publish. The consideration of this subject lies 
solely, so far as this book is concerned, between the author and his 
readers. He brings forth his evidence and advances his assertions. 
His readers weigh both, and draw their own conclusions. There is 
no sense in trying to conceal these relations by any "set forms of 
speech," no matter how customary those forms may be. 

My religious opinions, I am ready to confess in the outset, are 
not orthodox. And, indeed, who that reads and thinks to-day is 
orthodox, that is, as the term was understood fifty, or even ten 
years ago? The world moves; the race itself progresses. It is not 
possible for men to-day to see things as they saw them yesterday. 
Who believes the fables of the Old Testament; who sees and under- 
stands them in their literal sense? Who does not seek to explain 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

them by a resort to natural causes? Who believes in a personal 
God, or a personal Devil, or in angels that are as monstrous in form as 
the Centaur or Mermaids? I protest against the sin of teaching, 
even to little children, what we ourselves know to be false; I protest 
against even innocent and fashionable fibbing; I protest against 
stultifying ourselves; I protest against the vain attempts to have 
religion mould science, rather than science mould religion; I protest 
against all sprites, all elfs, all patron saints, all Cupids, all Mercuries 
and Jupiters — of which Ave seem to have as many now as they ever 
had in Greece or Rome in their craziest days. 

I beg to have it understood that I do not seek to depreciate 
or destroy religion. I will not admit that a person lives who places 
a higher estimate upon the value of religion than I do; no one feels 
its effects upon society more sensibly, and no one trusts in 
its power ovej the heart more implicitly than I do. But science 
has opened my eyes. I see God as revealed not alone in the 
Scriptures, but in all nature around us. I have the same faith now 
that I had formerly, but it is not founded upon the same basis, 
Formerly I trusted in tradition only; now I refuse to believe what 
reason abhors. So far from opposing that religion which I have all 
along defended, I seek merely to divest it of that false and fanciful 
covering which renders it disgusting and offensive to every honest 
and intelligent heart. No, I love the church, as I love every society 
that seeks to do good; I want to labor for it and work with it. But 
then it stands to-day, in my opinion, in a false light; it is clad in the 
borrowed mythological drapery of the ancients ; it is not the religion 
of to-day. Following its present walks, Christianity is just as liable 
to do harm as to do good. It is merely behind the age. There has 
been no development in it. The earth has revolved, and returned 
upon its axis again and again. The sun has risen and set, and the 
planets have goneon in their courses. Yet religion, worth more to 
us than all the treasures of earth beside, moves not. It stands 
to-day where it stood two, perhaps six, thousand years ago. We 
believe what our fathers believed, and teach what our fathers taught. 
The sedate and cynic monks of the Dark Ages did nothing more 
nor less than we have done. But is it strange that a religion which 
the pious old Jews made for us twenty centuries ago should hardly 
fit us now? Is it strange that, as a tight-fitting and ill adapted 
garment, it leaves us naked in some places and draws tightly upon us 
in others? Finally, are we not capable, at this late day, of develop- 
ing our own faith and seeking our own salvation? 

I stand, as I conceive the matter, between two hostile and irre- 
concilable extremes, the scoffers and revilers of religion at the one 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

pole, and the'unprogressive, unreasoning, immovable devotees of 
religion at the other. I represent that vast multitude of reflecting 
and feeling humanity who shun the touch of the atheist and the 
blasphemer as they would the plague, and at the same time pity the 
listless and thoughtless worshiper of mystery and ignorance as 
they would the child or the savage. I belong to that numerous 
class of individuals, in the church as well as out of it, who believe 
that religion is progressive; that it was not in the Old Testament 
what it is in the New; that it is not in the Reformation what it was 
out of it ; that it is not to-day what it was yesterday, and that it 
will not be to-morrow what it was the day before. Religion is no 
monster. It had a natural birth; it has lived a natural life, and 
will die a natural death. Religion is no miracle. It was born in 
the nature of man. It lives with him; it grows with him, and as 
the race vanishes and is lost, it will finally decay and disappear with 
him. Religion is simply the reflex of man's character and position. 
In the very nature of things the heathens have one belief, the half 
civilized another, and the enlightened still another. 

I look to religion as the true source of all good, all virtue, all 
truth ; and upon the church as the proper defender and representative 
of this religion. But with all this, I believe that with the weight of 
some excrescences which now bear it down, it cannot go on suc- 
cessfully to the fulfilment of its mission, I claim that the religion of 
to-day does not meet the wants of the hour. It is not doing for humanity 
what God intended it should do. It is to-day what it was in Moses' 
time, too much a religion of forms. There is no heart in it ; it is 
pulseless. The ministry mean to perform what is demanded of 
them, but they have, in my opinion, simply mistaken their duty. 
While humanity is dying for work, the pulpit gives us simply dis- 
cussion and precept; while she begs for the substance, it is the 
shadow that is given her. But, is it with dazzle, and pomp, and 
glitter, and form, and pretence, and show, that we are going to 
appease a just and an unrelenting God? Oh, what would our good 
old Methodist fathers and mothers say to these things ? Shall we go 
to heaven on church records, long praying, much fasting, liturgies 
well learned, and pew rents liberally paid? Ah, my good friends, 
is that what God demands? Is that what people are to do to be 
saved? Is there nothing in common between our religion and our 
morality? Is religion not the parent and pattern of morality? Is 
there nothing of true Christ left in us ? 

For myself these are the chief commandments, and surely 
" there is none other than these." "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

and with all thy strength; this is the first commandment. And the 
second is like, namely this: Thou shalt loye thy neighbor 

AS THYSELF." 

My mission, as I conceive it, is different from that of any man 
who has preceded me. I come neither to build up a church nor to 
gather in converts. I come merely to establish that which is 
founded already. I am opposed to no sect, or at least, am as much 
opposed to one sect as I am to another. It is the general truths of 
religion that I am discussing, rather than the imperfections and 
weaknesses of any particular sect. If they will only open their 
eyes and see, or their ears and hear, I am confident they may all 
profit by the lesson I am now attempting to give them. 

I come to violate no law and to oppose no organization. I 
come not as Huss did, or Luther or Calvin, with fire in my eye and 
Satan in my heart. I come as the Summer breeze cometh, to soothe, 
strengthen and delight. I come in the interests of peace, to pro- 
mote peace. I come to teach liberty of conscience and liberty of 
sentiment, the unrestricted right of all men and women to believe 
in those doctrines which the God of heaven, as well as the God of 
earth, impels them to believe. I come to teach the common brother- 
hood of the race, not in theory only, but in practice, not for any one 
sect, hutjbr all mankind. I come to teach love, the love for all 
nature, as well as for Nature's God. I come to praise God, not 
because I fear him, but because I love him; not because I dread his 
mightiness, but because I adore his goodness. 

I hope in all things to show myself a man, but in no case more 
than in this important undertaking. I hope that no sort of persecu- 
tion and no possible step on the part of my Christian opposers, will 
remove me from that calmness and forbearance which is proper for 
one who would preach good irill to all men. 

My motives in this matter let no man impugn. I may be mis- 
guided; harm may come where only good was intended, but let no 
man say that my purposes are not just, and that the objects I have 
aimed at are not those becoming to one who claims to be in the 
fullest sense of the term a follower of Christ. What is here 
written and published is not to gratify any spleen or satisfy any 
ambition. It is the simple performance of what I conceived to be 
my imperative duty. I have felt myself inspired in writing this, 
just as the writers of the Old and New Testament no doubt felt 
themselves inspired. I have felt, fatalist that I am, that God has 
preserved me unto this day to do this very work. It has been my 
resolve from my youth onward to do what I am now doing. I have 
never lost sight of it for one moment. I have never doubted, never 



INTROD UCTION. 7 

hesitated; I have never lost confidence in God, never distrusted 
either his wisdom or his power. I acknowledge his supremacy 
in all things. I feel my own nothingness ; I feel that I am 
merely an instrument in his hands, simply "a reed shaken by the 
wind". I seek no glory, I ask no applause. I want no triumphs 
but the triumphs of light and reason. 

Finally, I come to utter what has been suppressed for more than 
a century. I come to breathe aloud sentiments and* remonstrances 
which have lain smothering in the heart since the day that Luther 
was born. I come to speak for intelligent manhood, to publish to 
the world what thinking men feel, but which they do not find it 
policy to utter. I come to protest against the bigotry, the selfishness, 
the intolerance, and the hypocrisy which prevail too largely to-day 
among those who claim to be followers of Christ. 



THE BIBLE. 



CHAPTER I, 

ITS VALUE. 

The Christian religion is founded upon the Bible, and it is this 
book that we will make our first subject for consideration. As 
a book of records, there are none more sacred; as a collection of moral 
and religious teachings, there are none so holy. What intelligent man 
is there who will not reverence it for its antiquity? Who is there 
that will not hold it in tender regard for its piety and its wisdom ? 
If in the pride of our self-sufficiency, we cast that aside, what better 
code or constitution shall we take in its stead? I venerate that 
blessed book; I love its holy teachings, I humbly bow to its divine 
authority, but after all, I do not worship it, at least I do not worship 
it as the blind heathens worship their deities, their relics, and their 
heroes. I cannot consent that it shall be veiled from our sight, or 
carefully concealed in the adytum of the temple, while its oracles 
are, as it were, handed down to us from the lips of some venerated 
priestess. For me at least the age of wild and senseless devotion is 
past. If I confess the power of the Bible, it must be simply 
because I feel that power. If I recognize its authority, it is only 
because I perceive that recognition to be due. 

ITS CHARACTER. 

I acknowledge that the Bible is sacred, but not that it is beyond 
the limits of human intelligence and inquiry. If it claims our 
submission and support, I have a right to ask for the basis upon 
which those claims are founded, and it is in this connection that I 
now proceed to seek after the true character of the Bible. 

The question in which we are most concerned is this : is the 
Bible infallible; is it a direct revelation from God, in the sense 
commonly understood ; is it essentially different from other books, 
at least from similar books among other people? Our answer to 
these questions is, unhesitatingly, no. The Bible does indeed differ 



THE BIBLE. 9 

from all other books, but only as one book differs from, or is above, 
another. The Bible writers were no doubt divinely inspired; they 
were men who drew near unto God and held close communion with 
him, but I do not believe they were the last ones or the only ones 
who ever felt that divine inspiration. All true christian and good 
men who write or speak what they feel impelled to utter are, I 
believe, even to-day, in like manner inspired of God, — with an inspira- 
tion like the prophets in kind, but far less, probably, in degree. 

But when you insist that I shall receive as gospel truth the saying 
that God left his high throne in heaven to aid in preparing or com- 
piling this holy book, that he prepared tables of stone, that "the 
tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of 
God" (Ex., 23, 16), you are going altogether too far back into the 
the regions of superstition and myth to permit me to put any 
reliance in the truth of such a story. However, it is not claimed 
that anything more than an insignificant portion of this great book 
came thus direct from the hand of God — a little in the books of 
Moses, and that is all. So far as relates to anything godlike in 
the appearance of these accounts, the writers of the Bible relate, just 
as other historians or narrators do, simply what they have seen, 
heard, or believe. 

The leading error in the religious notions of Christian people 
seems to be this : that no such book can be found in the world, none 
so good, none so great, none so divine. And yet it is a fact that 
there is no enlightened people upon the earth that has not just such 
a book of its own, a bible. There is none without its traditions, 
none without its records, none without its accounts of a world 
created, of a deluge, of wicked men and their punishments, of Devils 
and Gods, their wondrous workings and their interminable conflicts. 
There is none without its code of morals, none without its well 
defined rules of conduct, none without certain prescribed conditions 
by which they are to be governed in this world and saved in the 
the world to come. 

The Mahometans have their Koran; there is the Zendavesta of 
Zoroaster, and the sacred Vedas of the Hindoos, the writings of 
Confucius and the Shu-King, the book par excellence of the Chinese. 
These holy writings were not only believed and adopted each by a 
race more numerous than our own, but even we ourselves are forced 
to confess that they bear upon their face abundant marks of wisdom, 
of goodness, and of great moral excellence. We might also name 
the Mythology of the Greeks and Romans ; we might speak of their 
fables, their traditions, their aphorisms, their philosophy. We 
affect to ridicule and despise these chapters in the history of an 



10 THE BIBLE. 

ancient people, and yet we know them to have been our equals at 
least in all that makes a race learned and intelligent, in all tl^at gives 
it grandeur and renown, in all that makes it at the same time 
powerful and permanent. 

We descant with great confidence upon the sparse literary 
remains of an extinct people. There is no uncertainty in our minds 
about their character. We assign to them a natural origin, and 
give them a natural history. But in what essential elements do 
these documents differ from our own holy scriptures ? We worship 
our writings as sacred, and so do other people worship as sacred the 
writings that they have inherited. We consider ours as affording 
the supreme law and direction in life, and so they consider theirs. 
We consider theirs a mere collection of holy traditions handed down 
from generation to generation, embellished with such additions as 
the imagination of commentators could supply. We find woven in 
these writings the thoughts and philosophy of certain devout and 
reflective individuals, men who have felt impelled by a power 
unseen to themselves, and who have been urged forward to sacrifice 
both their happiness and life in order that a world might be saved. 
And when you add to this the codes of certain moral lawgivers, 
what have we more or less than our own Bible affords ? 

Christians assume, in the sufficiency of their own conceit, not 
only that theirs is the only Bible extant, but that theirs is the only 
true religion. No other people, if we may believe what they pretend, 
have a true God, none have a true Savior, none others have reliable 
prophets, none others afford a veritable Satan and a true purgatory. 
Now, this is the- same old story repeated over and over again in the 
history of every nation on the globe, and we need not except even 
the nomads of Asia or the savages of the New World. Wrapped 
up and concentrated as it were in self, they are all equally certain 
in their own hearts that they are the only reliable and important 
people on earth, and, as a matter of course, that theirs is the only 
true religion and philosophy of the world. The creeds of the Turks 
and Chinese are disgusting to us, and the Turks and Chinese again 
are astonished at our ignorance and conceit. It requires a great 
deal of effort, much concentrated mental power and some intelligence, 
to enable us to break open the crust that envelopes us, and cast off 
the covering that dims our reason and blunts our senses. We have 
only to look about us and use the light that nature gives us, to 
perceive that as a people we are only one among thousands, that we 
are neither the only one nor the first one, and that in all probability 
we shall not be the last one, in the world. 

As it is with us as a people, so it is with ours as a religion. It 
is only one unit in a vast collection of units, all of them alike in 



THE BIBLE. 11 

character and kind, and each performing its own useful and im- 
portant office in the development and direction of the heart. They 
are all true in themselves, true from a certain stand-point, true for a 
certain time and in a certain place. All start upon a career more or 
less lasting, and all are destined to give place to something more 
vigorous and youthful in the end. 

I concede most cheerfully that our religion is founded in truth, 
but I consider it a mark both of vanity and weakness to imagine 
that no other religion has a foundation so good. Ours is truth for 
us ; it is good for us ; it corresponds to our conditions and ans- 
wers to our wants ; it is in harmony with our thoughts and purposes, 
and that is why we adopt it. It is truth as we view it, truth as seen 
reflected in ourselves. But it is no truth for the Hindoo, or the 
Arab, or the followers of Fot, for the reason that they have differ- 
ent conditions, and they must have different doctrines to meet them. 
Our religion would be worthless to them, nay more, it would be 
positively ruinous. They want something different, something born 
of their own nature, something that satisfies their own needs and 
meets their own requirements. 

In the character of religion as we have just described it, behold 
the picture of truth in general. In my humble judgment, the nature 
of truth has been, and is even now, most sadly misunderstood. It 
is not a single indivisible and undeveloped thing, fitted for all times 
and for all people, and remaining to eternity without modification 
or change. Of that which is received as true now most of it was 
not so accepted a thousand years ago, and will not, in all probability » 
be so accepted a few centuries hence. It is a well known fact that 
what we believe to be true other people equally intelligent and 
equally honest, believe to be false ; and we deny as absurd and per- 
nicious what others draw to their bosoms as both beautiful and just. 

It is the height of folly to assume that what we believe must 
always and of necessity be true. Let us rather see and believe that 
what is truth from one stand-point cannot be truth from some other; 
that truth is not everlasting nor unchangeable ; that it grows and 
develops, and in the end will decay. Let us not be counted among 
the number of those who are wont to claim that because one thing 
is true every other thing in the same direction must be false. There 
is a great deal of truth in this world, much more than people com- 
monly suppose. Truth has its fashions, truth has its changes, truth 
has its times. I beg to assure my readers that truth has no royal 
road, no constant and invariable standard by which to measure either 
justice or virtue. Under some circumstances it is a great crime to 
have killed a man, and again under other conditions, it may be 



12 THE BIBLE. 

either excusable or glorious. Robbery and thieving pass for great 
offenses with us, while other people encourage them as tending 
to develop both dexterity and sharpness. Here it is a grave charge 
to have killed a child; elsewhere, for different reasons, the murder 
of infants is not only permitted but encouraged. And so we might 
go on through the whole list of what we have been taught to con- 
sider as imperative duties, but which, every one, we find elsewhere 
condemned and discarded. 

ITS AUTHENTICITY. 

As we turn now to consider briefly the authenticity of the scrip- 
tures, it will be necessary first to determine what we mean by the 
term authentic. We speak of an ordinary history as authentic, when 
we are assured that it is written by some one who has had peculiar 
sources of positive and reliable information. When we speak of 
the scriptures as authentic records, however, we mean this and some- 
thing more. The essential point in the authenticity of these writings 
lies in the question whether they are, as assumed and believed to be 
by Christians, laws, records and revelations coming directly from God. 
It is upon this fact of divine origin that Christians wish to found the 
supreme authority of the scriptures, rather than upon any power 
inherent in the scriptures themselves. In other words, the Bible 
contains histories, laws and precepts coming directly from the hand 
of God, as opposed to every other book which can contain only that 
which fallible man can write. This is the main point of authen- 
ticity that I come to discuss. 

But where is the evidence, in those writings or out of them, 
that they were prepared directly or indirectly by the hand of God? 
Have the several parts of the Bible anything in themselves which 
would indicate a divine or an extraordinary origin ? There is nothing 
in them, not one word, that might not have been written, as similar 
writings have been written over and over again, by some one who 
was really an impostor, or by one who, as seems most probable in 
this case, conceived himself to be sent of heaven to instruct and 
direct mankind. 

Where, again I ask, is the impress of the divine hand in this 
book? In matters of such grave importance, must we take the 
unaided, uncorroborated, word of him who renders the account, 
and who claims to be both prophet and messenger? There is not, 
I venture to say, within the lids of that book one single attempt 
to prove by external or additional evidence, or to demonstrate in any 
way, that God did ever dictate or write one single word therein con- 
tained. We read indeed of a multitude of things which ' 'the Lord 
said unto Moses" and unto others, as if it was the most ordinary 



THE BIBLE. 13 

thing in the world for the Lord to hold special converse with men 1 
For us, this would be an extraordinary event, requiring some more 
proof than the mere ipse dixit of any one. But what have we in 
the Bible beyond the mere impression of one who may have been 
mistaken as to the personage whom he conceived to be the Lord, or 
who may have either misunderstood or not faithfully remembered 
the language that he heard ? What single thing do we know of 
the character of the writer to entitle him to our confidence in mat- 
ters of such grave importance ? Perhaps too when he uses the for- 
mula "the Lord said", he does not mean that the Lord really talked 
aloud in this manner, but rather that the Lord impressed certain 
things upon his heart, or showed him certain things in a vision. 
It is evident besides that a large portion of the Bible must have been 
written upon the merest hearsay, for no single person could have 
witnessed all the things which we find related there ; for example 
is it not rather doubtful that Moses was present when God created 
the heavens and the earth ? 

Again, we are wont to speak of the Bible, as if it was one com- 
plete book, uniform and homogeneous, as indeed it would be, if it 
all came from the hands of the great Creator, God. But in fact we 
know it to be a heterogeneous mass, a mere pile of detached and dis- 
connected pieces, of every conceivable character, from the wildest 
romance down to the most serious disquisition in poetry and prose,, 
a book prepared confessedly by a multitude of persons, various in 
their rank, in learning and in piety; with chapters, some of them 
written in the darkest and most uncertain ages of the world, and 
others again of much later date than some of our profane history. 
Where, again we ask, is the evidence that God wrote or dictated 
the whole of that book, down to and including the epistles of Paul 
and Peter, as he must have done, if it is the Bible, the book of God? 

So little evidence is there to be found to enlighten us, so very 
delicate is the shade that separates the sacred from the profane, that 
no two sects, nor two communities, nor even two men, agree exactly 
upon what should and what should not be considered scriptural. 
Contrary to the commonly received opinion, that the Bible writings 
have marks peculiar to themselves by which they are easily distin- 
guished from those which are not sacred, it has been found one of 
the most embarrassing questions in the world to decide what are 
scriptures and what are not. Some, as the Jews, receive the Old 
Testament and reject the New ; some books that are rejected as 
apocryphal by us, the Catholics adopt as sound and sacred. The 
question as to what books are genuine and what are spurious is not 
yet decided even among Protestants. Of those that are cast out, no 



14 THE BIBLE. 

one would say that they are not as holy in character as some of 
those accepted, and no one would say that they have not as much 
evidence to corroborate their stories and substantiate their claims. 

Perhaps some may really suppose that the Bible was a book 
handed down to some of the prophets and preserved carefully for 
thousands of years. Yet this is not the case ; it is merely a collection 
of records gathered together at various epochs in the world, derived 
from various sources and compiled by various authors. A certain 
Ezra, in the time of the Babylonish captivity, seems to have taken 
upon himself to collect, improve, and prepare the sacred writings of 
his time and make a Bible. We are not informed what particular 
standard he applied, or what particular talent he had above other 
men which enabled him thus to separate the dross from the gold, 
and set upon one side the scriptural and upon the other the profane. 
He had a large mass for selection, and his task was no light one. 
However, the Bible has been growing since his day, and many parts 
now taken as sound were not known or received in his time. Others 
have tried their ability in the same work of collecting, copying and 
correcting the manuscripts of the Bible, and they have left their 
imprint, too, upon every one of its pages. 

Besides, have we any idea of the number of times those various 
manuscripts have been copied, in how many places they have been 
revised and interlined, and how much they have been changed and 
improved by translators? We do know that much has been left out, 
that much has been altered, and that many portions have been em- 
bellished by the copyists. We know that many accounts are given 
one way in one of the Old Testament books, and in a very different 
way in another, so different that it is impossible for both of them to be 
true. And still the Bible, all of it, is a book fresh from the hands 
of God ! It has passed down through a great many different lan- 
guages, with the likelihood each time of having its meaning misun- 
derstood by the translator, or if understood, of having it misrepre- 
sented. And still the meaning in many places has been left in the 
gravest doubt. Nevertheless, we are asked to believe that it is the 
book of God, a work come directly from his pen, or at least, pre- 
pared strictly under his dictation. 

It will not answer to admit, and we believe it is not so admitted, 
that it is a joint production of God and man, for that would destroy 
its claim to being a book of God. to say nothing of the utter impos- 
sibility of deciding which part was the work of one and which of the 
other. But we do know, and no one will deny it for one moment, 
that men, common, fallible men, have had very much to do in giving 
the character and form to the Bible which it is now found to assume. 



THE BIBLE. 15 

Nor must it be overlooked as a fact to be taken into considera- 
tion in this connexion, that we have not even the slightest evidence 
to prove that the men, such as Moses and Joshua, whose names 
stand at the head of certain portions of the Bible, are really the 
authors as claimed. Next to Christ, yea hardly next to him in the 
minds of the Christian world, is Moses. His is the very highest 
authority, and could we put our finger upon that which we know 
came from him, we would ascribe to it the most inestimable value. 
But how difficult is this task! There are the celebrated five books 
which bear his name, worth all the rest of the Old Testament together, 
and more. But how little, if indeed there be any, of all this can we 
believe that Moses wrote of his own knowledge, if he ever wrote it 
at all. The great events spoken of in Genesis, more momentous 
than any known to have take place in the world before or since, and 
upon the truth of which all our religion is founded, must have 
occurred long before Moses was born ; and the accounts contained 
in this book must either have come from tradition or must have 
taken rise in the fruitful imagination of the writer himself. But 
worse than this, so far as regards the authority of these books, is 
the concluding chapter of Deuteronymy, where Moses gives an 
account of his own death and burial, and even tells us his age when 
he died. When we come down to the still later writings of the New 
Testament, we are just as much puzzled to decide whether such men 
as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, did or did not write the Gos- 
pels, as we are in regard to the books of the Old Testament. 

But the proof that the Bible is not a miracle, that it is not a 
book from God, as Christians have so far understood it to be, does 
by no means end here. It is evident that an allwise being, such as 
we conceive God to be, would easily see that to send into the world 
what his people could not interpret, or which with every show of 
fairness and justice, they could construe in a manner suited to their 
own interests and tastes, he might as well not have sent at all. In- 
deed, if he desired to have it a revelation of his heavenly will and a 
collection of rules and precepts to direct us in life, how easy would 
it have been for him to make it plain and unmistakable. As it is, 
no one is so wise as to be able to decide with certainty just what is 
commanded in this great book, and what is forbidden. That we can 
find authority there for almost anything that we wish, is evident from 
the multitude of different sects, with various beliefs, all of which 
lay their foundation on the Bible, and claim to tak« its precepts as 
their guide. The many ponderous volumes of commentaries may be 
taken as further evidence of the exceeding uncertainty of scripture 
teachings and the painful mystery of revealed law. 



16 THE BIBLE. 

But we must remark in this connexion that the Bible has no 
character of its own, no fixedness, so far as its meaning is concerned. 
It is one of the best attested facts in history, that it grows, develops, 
changes. The Bible has no such meaning, it is no such book for us, 
as it was in the days of Christ. Its interpretation grows through 
regular stages of development, marked and measured by the culture 
of the age in which the interpretation is made. The Bible for us 
and the Bible for those who lived 200 years ago reads very differ- 
ently. Men will not repudiate it, they will not deny its authenticity, 
but they will give it that version which accords with their scientific 
notions and their own general faith. This very same result we 
notice in the history of every constitution, whether political or re- 
ligious. The American people are treating their constitution to-day 
in this very manner. Written as it was for other times, it is adapted 
to our altered circumstances by the apt version which we give it. 
This course is particularly noticeable in the case of all religious 
codes. They all have their interpreters, and all interpret them in 
different ways. We find an excellent illustration of this principle 
in the mythological or religious records of the Greek and Romans. 
At first they were believed to read what the words literally meant. 
As time wore along and such a version seemed absurd, it was softened 
down by explanations and qualifications. The facts recorded were 
not believed to be literally true, but nevertheless they were supposed 
to he founded in truth and to be only somewhat exaggerated in the 
details. Further on, they were treated as allegory; finally, they 
were discarded entirely as the palpable fictions of a poetic imagina- 
tion, and thus their religion went to the ground. It will not require 
any great penetration to enable one to perceive that some of these 
stages are in common with our own. What their good sense will 
not allow them to accept, Christians now receive under protest, or 
they satisfy their conscience with an easy interpretation. They give 
it what the college boys call " a free translation". 

To this we must add that if the Bible is a divine revelation, we 
have a right to expect that at least it should contain thoughts and 
doctrines suitable and appropriate to a Supreme Being. But who 
will claim that the Bible, the Old Testament at least, contains such 
matter ? Who will deny for one moment that there is much in that 
book that is every way revolting to our tastes, our judgment and our 
sense ; much that we would be ashamed to read even in any decent 
company? If God really wrote the Old Testament, and if he gives 
such a picture of himself, his character and actions as that record 
contains, should we not despise him rather than revere him ? If 
God wrote or dictated that book, he must have had a purpose in 



THE BIBLE. 17 

view, he must have intended some good, some benefit to his children. 
But of what earthly good, pray tell us, can it be to read the most 
that is written there ? Why so far from its being a revelation of 
divine will, and a holy code for our direction, it is mostly taken up 
with the ancient records of a vain and conceited people and the ac- 
count of a weak, jealous and vacillating God. And for what good, 
I ask ? We have in it an account of much more vice than virtue, 
and the vice that is noticed there is rather approved than condemned. 
I confess my surprise at finding any one who could believe that 
such thoughts and such words could come direct from a God, the 
God of a civilized people. 

The Bible is a revelation from God, for what purpose ? To im- 
prove us ? How much of that which it contains tends to produce 
that result ? How much that is recounted there would not rather 
produce the opposite result ? How dare we call it an especial reve- 
lation from God ? It embodies too many of the dogmas, the sub- 
tleties and the absurdities that characterize the writings of man, to 
admit of our calling it the work of a divine being. 

ITS HISTORY. 

The common understanding is, as intimated before, that Ezra 
settled the question of the books of the Old Testament. But who 
was Ezra ? No one knows much about him, save that his name was 
Ezra. Who gave him his charter authorizing him to fix up the 
Bible ? We would like to know, but no one tells us. He did it, 
but did it when ? A great while ago — nobody knows exactly when. 
But he was a bold reformer. He took the whole responsibility on 
his own shoulders. What books he liked he accepted ; those that 
did not please him he rejected as trash, and even those that he ac- 
cepted, he corrected and embellished to suit either his own fancy 
or the emergency of the case. 

It is a most annoying circumstance to people who believe in 
the infallibility of the Scriptures, that there are so many apocryphal 
books, both in the Old Testament and in the New. It is perfectly 
well known that people before Christ, and a long time after Christ, 
were in the habit of writing scriptures on their own account. And so 
admirably executed were these "divine writings", it was absolutely 
impossible to distinguish the counterfeit from the genuine — and so 
the question hangs even unto the present day. We are absolutely at 
a loss to tell exactly how many books belong in the Bible ; we do not 
know how many that are in it ought to be out, and how many that 
are out ought still to be in. 

A person would think that devout people like the Jews would 
have been very careful to preserve a faithful catalogue of the Sacred 

2 



18 THE BIBLE. 

Books. But none such has ever been found. Melito made one for 
himself two hundred years, not B. C, but after Christ. But he 
leaves out Esther, and includes the apocryphal Book of Wisdom. 
In the 3d century, Origen made another list. 

Again, we are told that the Scriptures were lost during the 
Babylonish captivity, and never appeared again till Ezra found them 
400 years B. C. These writings were lost 800 years. What a regard 
those devout Jews must have had for the Scriptures ! But they also 
lost their language, and spoke only Chaldaic. So the Scriptures had 
to be interpreted by the priests who might, and no doubt did, add 
certain improvements of their own. A person would have supposed 
that the "Children of God'' would have preserved the instructions 
handed down by their father with the most scrupulous care. But 
no, they lost them, and they found them, and they lost them again, 
and finally when they found them again, they were not sure whether 
they had the right ones or not — and so the matter remains in doubt 
even to the present day. 

Hilkiah we are told in Chronicles (287 B. C), found a book of 
the law. This was rather late in the day to find such a document, 
and then heaven only knows whether he got the right book even 
then. And the Jews were astonished. I do not doubt it. Though 
they were "Children of God," they did not know what a book of the 
law was — they had never seen one before. Joe Smith's people were 
also astonished when he found a book of the law. Hilkiah found the 
book of the law ! And who was Hilkiah ? Let those who know 
tell ; and while they are about it, let them also inform us how he 
came to find it. We know who Joe Smith was, and where he found 
his book of the law, but Hilkiah's history is not so well written. 

People have been cheated, humbugged and imposed upon over 
and over again in these religious matters, among other people, why 
may it not be so with us ? To arouse our suspicions, we eveiy year 
see some new ism arise, some new dogma prevail, growing up as it 
does on the audacity of some infatuated and designing creature. 
There are the Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Quakers, &c. How 
do we know that the custodians of the Scriptures for say 4,000 or 
more long years have not been a little remiss in their duty, and let 
some knave slip in the wrong book"? That has been done more than 
once, and we have nothing to prove that it has not been done in 
this case. 

We cannot rely much on Hilkiah, and it is better to start, as 
most writers do, with Ezra as the founder of the Bible. Some 
writers say that he not only found the Scriptures, but that he fabri- 
cated them. This is quite possible, for we know that many Scrip- 
tures have been fabricated. But if we date only from Ezra, the 



THE BIBLE. 19 

^Bible is not a very old book, not so old as many books that do not 
claim to have a divine origin. For a book of the law, 400 B. C. is 
comparatively a recent date. 

Others again say that up to Maccabees, and that was 200 B. C. , 
there was no book of scriptures. There were only scattered frag- 
ments, and in such a condition as to render them extremely liable to all 
sorts of changes and spurious insertions. But how did Maccabees 
come to be authorized to collect and arrange these fragments ? 

It is evident, moreover, that we have not the whole of it. That 

everybody admits. The Jews lost some of their books and actually 

burnt others. It seems strange to me that God did not see to it that 

these writings were better cared for ; and as he knows everything, 

he also knows where these scriptures were lost, and hence could tell 

the Jews just where they could find them. But they were lost, and 

are still lost, some of the most divine writings that man has ever 

known ! 

THE SEPTUAGINT. 

But the Bible to which we now date back as the original is the 
Septuagint, a Greek translation. And how can a Greek translation 
of a Hebrew text give anything more than an approximation to the 
true word ? So we do not have the true word, not the original 
word, not the real stuff, but only a translation to stand on ! And 
when we consider all the changes and additions and omissions and 
amendments that have been made by man for the last 2,000 years, 
what shall we think or say of the authenticity of the Bible ? Our 
Hebrew Bible turns out to be really a Greek one. The best Christian 
critics we have admit that many words in the original Hebrew could 
not be translated into Greek at all. Hence it is not strange that no 
two translators ever have agreed, or ever will agree, on the proper 
version of the Scriptures. An eminent Christian professor, DuPin, 
has well said : " It is mere superstition to assert that the Hebrew 
text we have is not corrupted in any place, and that there is no fault, 
nor anything left out." 

To bring greater obscurity on the subject, it is even now asserted 
by good Christian doctors, that our Septuagint version is a spurious 
one, the true copy being lost at the burning of the Alexandrian 
Library. The Christian father, St. Jerome, says, alluding to the 
Old Testament version : " If they say that the Latin copies are to be 
credited, let them tell me which; for there are almost as many 
different copies as there are manuscripts." 

NEW TESTAMENT. 

So much for the authenticity of the Old Testament. Now let 
us see how much better we are off with the New. The New Testa- 



20 THE BIBLE. 

ment claims to give the teachings of Christ, hut there is this unfortu- 
nate circumstance, in this connexion, to begin with : Christ himself 
never wrote a word of the New Testament. We have no evidence 
that he could write at all. So we have all his sayings handed down 
in the crudest and most unreliable manner possible. We are told again 
and again what Christ said. But here we must depend upon tradition, 
the most unsafe of all kinds of evidence, where everything should be 
exact. Where not a word should be added or subtracted and none 
substituted, we have to depend on the poorest of all kinds of evi- 
dence, hearsay — and that hearsa}* nearly 2,000 years old. We have 
no reason to believe that any one ever made a single note or memo - 
randum of Christ's sayings, during his life time. The writings of 
Paul, and others who wrote epistles, were those of an earnest and 
devoted preacher, a follower of Christ, giving up his life in the 
service of his master. As such they are of the highest authority, 
but they are no more. 

Joe Smith got his bible mostly in a lump, and Mahomet got his 
from time to time, but it came, in both cases, direct from God him- 
self (so it is pretended at least). There was no confusion among 
copyists, no quarreling among commentators. But ours was written 
by Saints, and Prophets, and Disciples, 200 or 300 years after Christ 
was dead and gone. Scarcely a chapter of the New Testament is 
even pretended to have been written less than 100 years after Christ. 

There is not the slightest proof that those whose names are 
placed at the head of the gospels were in any way concerned in their 
production. It is simply mentioned that they are gospels according 
to certain men whose names are given. It is not known by whom 
the heading according to was added. That the authors of these 
gospels were divine, or had peculiar sources of information, has 
never been shown by any one. Strange as it may seem to some, 

THERE IS XOT AS ORIGINAL COPY EXTANT OF ANY OF THE BlHLE 
WRITESTGS, EITHER OF THE OLD OR NEW TESTAMENT. 

The foundation and body of the New Testament structure is 
the Four Gospels. But on what evidence do they rest? These were 
not written till 150 years after Christ. On their very face they are 
mere collections of sayings and common reports. Not one of the 
gospel writers was a companion of Christ. ' ' From the era of 
Christ until the latter end of the fourth century, there was no 
authorized collection of the writings of the New Testament. All 
was doubt and dispute for the first 300 years, during the very time 
when everything should have been certain and satisfactory. If it 
was all doubt 1,500 years ago, can it be all certainty now?" 

Again, the gospels are not the only histories of the kind, and 
hence their genuineness is not an easy question to decide. There 



♦ THE BIBLE. 21 

happens to be many other gospels apparently just as authentic as 
these are. Why they should have been crowded out, no one can 
possibly tell. On their face they are just as sound, most of them, 
as any of the Four, and they are supported by just as good evidence. 
They* were rejected simply because they did not happen to suit the 
fancy of the council which decided the question. 
- FALSE GOSPELS. 

Many of these spurious gospels were for a long time considered 
sound, and they still are by some writers. Many of them contain 
just as true doctrines, just as noble precepts, as any of the Four. 
They contain, I admit, many heathenish ideas and conceptions, but 
how much less can be said of the Four? In the earlier centuries, 
when people would be more able and more apt to distinguish the 
counterfeit gospels from the pure than we would at this late day, 
what are 'now denominated false gospels, were then held in high 
regard as perfectly good ones. 

If these apocryphal gospels were spurious, or magnified 
accounts, as Christians believe them to be, it demonstrates .this 
leading fact: that men did write, and that there are still in existence 
gospels which are wholly or partially founded on error. Now then, 
it being conceded that it is possible for men to write gospels 
which are not authentic, not written by the Divine Hand, and 
hence not reliable, it must be proved, that our four gospels do 
not belong to this class, that is, are not spurious. But no such 
proof has been given. No one has proved, or attempted to prove, 
that these four gospels are any more authentic than the hundred or 
less that have been rejected. 

It is to be regretted that these false gospels, so considered, have 
been, and still are, so carefully suppressed, and that it is so difficult 
to obtain a copy of them. They could do no harm, even if they could 
do no good. Those who examine them will find that they contain 
many points in common with our gospels. Many things are told 
there substantially as they are told in the Four, but besides, they 
contain many things that are new. In the gospel entitled the 
" Birth of Mary," there is a long story of Mary's early days — how 
she was divinely born, and divinely reared; made a virgin and 
married to Joseph, an old man, against his own choice — the arrange- 
ment being brought about by means of a sign. The writer evidently 
felt that whoever should be born of God should have something 
more than an ordinary mother. This, of course, is new to our 
gospels. The story of her pregnancy, however, and Gabriel's 
imparting the surprising information to her, is substantially as we 
find it in the Testament. 



:: TEE BIB LI 

The book called " Protevangdkm n was once considered high 
authority, and is certainly an interesting work. It relates fabulous 
and _ . : ated stories, but so do our own gospels. It differs from 
some, or even all of the Four, but so do each of these differ among 
themselves. If it tells Hse strangely, so does John tell his. He 
too has much that is new, much that you will fail to find in the 
other three. "What can be more fabulous in appearance than the 
story which John alone tells so carefully, that of the raising of 
L^z^-is \ 

The main points of the "Protevangelion" are these: That 
Joseph was a widower with children, an old man (as indeed all the 
old fathers and saints believed him to be, his assumed youngerly 
character being a modern idea); also the account of Anna, who in 
the end bore Mary, the mother of Jesus, and of Mary being fed by 
angels. The last chapters agree with portions of Matthew. The 
wise men came to worship. Herod is alarmed and wants to see 
Jesus to worship h im . He orders all children to be destroyed, and 
(here comes the variation) the mother of Jesus hides him in an ox- 
manger. John's mother is also alarmed and flees, but can find no place 
of security. John's mother. Elizabeth, could not climb the moun- 
tain : she called for the mountain to open and receive her, and it did as 
she wished. The star was one in heaven which outshone all the 
rest It also tells the story how Zaccharias. the father of John, 
thus escaping, was murdered by the orders of Herod, who was 
angry because he could not find the son. 

The gospel of the Infancy of Jesus is peculiar. In the 1st verse 
of the 1st chapter, we read: " The following accounts we found in 
the book of Joseph, the high priest Caiphas." 2d. He relates 
that Jesus spoke even when he was in the cradle, and said to his 
mother: Miry. I am Jesus, the son of God. which thou didst 
bring forth." Sec According to this gospeL Christ's whole infa~ 
~ raa glorious and marvellous. He caused wonderful cure- even 
while still an infant, by the sight of him or by his touch. In one 
case he causes a well to spring out, in which his mother washes his 
coat. He continued to perform wonderful cures. While yet a boy 
he formed clay figures and made them walk. He made clay birds 
fly, besides doing many other miracles,, but withal he is said to have 
been a poor carpenter. At another time he transformed his play- 
fellows into kids. He becomes the king of his companions. At 
school he is disobedient, but the hand of the schoolmaster wh 
about to punish him withers. E: is said to have studied law till 
his thirtieth vear. 



THE BIBLE. 23 

Thomas' gospel of the Infancy of Jesus is about in the same 
strain. He kills a boy, causes blindness on his accusers, and has 
his ears pulled by his father. 

The gospel of Nicodemus, which is long, gives a full account of 
Christ's descent into hell. Death and the Devil are in great horror 
at his coming. He tramples on Death, seizes the Prince of Hell, 
and takes Adam with him to heaven. 

Observe, thus, what men have been capable of writing of Christ. 
THE FOUR GOSPELS. 

Extensive and searching investigations by devout and Christian 
men have demonstrated that the gospels are collections merely, and 
their contradictions between themselves, and their inconsistencies, 
arise from the fact that their authors derived their information from 
different sources. 

They were first spoken of in the year 182. Not one of the 
apostolic fathers allude to them, as they would have done, had they 
been current. They refer to others, but not to Matthew, Mark, 
Luke and John. If so, these books could not have been composed 
by the apostles whose names they bear. 

We must draw the inference that thest gospels were composed long 
after Christ's time, by men who folloiced hearsay and idle traditions, and 
who personally kneic nothing either of Christ or his sayings. It is not 
strange then that we find in them so many things that sound very 
unlike the acknowledged doctrines and teachings of Christ. 

If we chose to pursue the inquiry, we could show by internal 
evidence that the gospels could not have been written by the men 
named, and at the time mentioned. 

THE EVANGELISTS. 

The Evangelists were simple historians. They give things as 
they saw or heard them, or at least as they understood them. They 
do not pretend to expound the laws which were given them, nor do 
they assume to increase the number of these laws by giving others 
which are new. They do not pretend to be divine men, or to have 
divine sources of information. 

Among the four Evangelists there seems to be this difference : 
Matthew seems to be the more original. He seems to have been 
something more than a transcriber. Mark, and Luke in particular, 
seem to have Matthew, or some other author, before them, and by 
this they seem to have been guided. It is even conjectured that 
Luke had both Matthew and Mark before him. He is certainly 
little more than a commentator and a copyist. John seems to have 
been a philosopher on his own account, an assumed improvement 
on his master. He is evidently later than all the others. There h 



M TEE BIBLE. 

much that is original with him. much, it is claimed, that he never 
inherited from Christ, and for which it is hardly proper that Christ 
should be held responsible. There are many words and ideas found 
in his book which are not found in those of the other evangelists 

The: ai e :he strongest reasons, facts that almost lead to a 
forced conclusion, that there hare been made, in the different ages 
through which the New Testament has come down to us. various 
changes and amendments in its writings. Those who have copied 
these writings, :: who edited them, have seen fit to interpolate 
them with explanations of their own. to add some portions and 
cast out others, merely to satisfy their notions as to what the Bible 
should contain. 

It is impossible that the evangelists have given all these long 
3S yinga of Christ, those sermons of his. upon anything like authen- 
tic information. It is generally conceded that all the evange. 
got their information second, if not fourth, hand, and it is no 
wonder that we find serious discrepancies. Renan well remarks 
I: Jesus sf k- as Matthew has it. he could not have spoker. :.- 
John has it." and further on, " I dare any person to compose a con- 
sistent life of Jesus if he* make- a . int of the discourses which 
John attributes to him. Surely the Christ of John and the Christ 
of the other gospels are not the same person."' 

How could Matthew and Mark record what they had not heard? 
How did the evangelists arrive at facts, of which they speak b : 
calmly and so positively, but of which they could not have been 
personally cognizant, the shadowing of the Holy Ghost for instance? 
Only by tradition, and fo we have simply tradition and reports clear 
through. 

NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 

In the middle of the third century. Origen "1. ought proper to 
make a selection of gospels on his own responsibility. Being a 
man of influence as well as of erudition, he succeeded in having 
his selection endorsed and his canon adopted. 

The Council of Laodicea declared that this was the true canon. 
But who authorized the Council of Laodicea to decide a mattei 
momentous"? How much better right had they to decide what was 
"law and gospel" than you, my reader, or I? They voted on it, 
and the ayes had it. But what if the noes had had it? Why then. 
then — there is no telling what then. I have never yet seen a council 
that was infallible, and I have not the slightest reason for believing 
that the Council of Laodicea was any exception to the rule. So far 
as deciding the matter by v : 2 goes, I would have been full as well 
satisfied if they had chosen to flip a penny, with the understanding 



THE BIBLE. 25 

that "heads I win, tails you lose." Who knows that the leading 
spirits of this assembly were not, as often happens in Christian 
assemblies, an obstinate, conceited and bigoted set of ministers? 
Who does not know that, as a matter of history, they were so? 
They have been spoken of as members of "a contentious and bab- 
bling assembly." 

And the Council of Nice was not a whit nicer. The disorder 

and irreligion of this gathering was so great that some of them even 
came to blows, and one pious bishop kicked and cuffed another poor 
bishop so badly that he died in less than three days. Fine gospel 
people these were to make Bibles for us here in the year 1874! 
Tindal speaks of them as being "most obstinate as to power, but 
flexible as to faith.'''' 

Of three councils, that of 406 rejected several books adopted by 
that of 363, but the Council of 680 restored them as they are — and that 
is the way we get the Bible as we find it. 

Many parts of the New Testament are still rejected by the 
most eminent and most Christian divines. The learned Evanson 
would include in his Testament only Luke, Acts, Paul and Revela- 
tions. Matthew, Mark and John he denominates "spurious fictions 
of the second century." The Swedenborgians take only the four 
gospels and Revelations. Luther rejected the Epistle of James. 
Erasmus and Calvin doubted Revelations, and so we might go on 
quoting high Christian authority till there would not be a chapter of 
the holy book left! 

Up to the fifteenth century, when printing was invented, the 
pious monks had charge of the Scriptures, and who knows how much 
the good book may have suffered by such keeping? That they 
would occasionally be guilty of some little trick seems to be gen- 
erally conceded. 

How is it to-day? Do all our various sects agree upon just how 
the Bible should read, and what it should contain? Not by any 
means ! One thing is very certain, and that is, no matter how divine 
may be the origin of the Bible, its character is fixed and its fate is decided 
entirely by a human tribunal, and we should dread to be held re- 
sponsible for all the hard usage it has received from some of its 
most devout worshipers. 

HOLY FATHERS. 

To get get a perfectly clear idea of the Scriptures and their 
value, we should become acquainted with the Fathers, those holy 
men who had charge of the sacred book for several hundred years, 
and who have made the Bible very much what we find it now. It 
is well known and universally admitted that the originals of the Old 



26 THE BIBLE. 

Testament, if originals they were, never made their appearance till 
300 or 400 years before Christ ; and the originals of the Xew Testa- 
ment, if originals they were, cannot date back to an earlier day than 
400 or 600 years after Christ and his apostles ; and since these writ- 
ings were from the first in the hands of the saints, or fathers of the 
earlier centuries, men who had the power, if they had not the will, 
to add their own corrections and additions to the Scriptures, it be- 
comes us to inquire here what sort of folks those Holy Fathers 
were. 

"We begin by saying that it is easily enough demonstrated that 
these Christian fathers were a set of deceivers and imposters, no 
better than the saints of the Old Testament, probably not so good. 
We happen to know, unfortunately for Bible infallibility, that they 
were not a Geo. Washington set of people who could not tell a lie. 
A small fib was as honey to their lips. We have the authority of 90 
good a Christian as Mosheim, in his church history, that "it was in 
the earlier centuries an act of virtue to deceive and lie when by that 
means the interests of the church might be promoted;" and "errors 
in religion were punished with civil penalties and corporeal tortures." 
He says it must be frankly confessed that the greatest men and most 
eminent saints were tainted with this corrupt principle that lying 
for the good of the church was all right and proper, and those who 
made it their business to deceive with the view to promote the cause 
of truth "were deserving of commendation rather than censure." 
We might, if we thought it necessary, give a whole volume of proof 
to show that this lying and cheating for the good of religion was 
the prevailing disease of the first twelve centuries of Christian era, 
and that while there is less of it in later times, it has not wholly 
disappeared yet. 

It was one of the most co mm on things imaginable in the earlier 
ages, for pious people to believe that they were inspired, and to feel 
authorized themselves to write Scriptures, thus making the number 
of spurious documents of sacred history far greater than the num- 
ber of pure ones. 

Considering then how the work began, and to whose hands the 
business was first entrusted, we need not wonder that, even down to 
the present day, the main business of Christian sects has been to 
revise and correct the Holy Scriptures, so as to enable them to meet 
the demands of their own liturgy. There are as many different 
readings and renderings of the Bible as there are verses in the book. 

BIBLE WRITERS. 

That no such man as Moses ever wrote the Pentateuch is easy 
enough to prove. The book of Genesis bears evidence upon its 



THE BIBLE. 27 

face that it was written by two, if not by more, authors. In 
Genesis there are two different stories placed side by side or inter- 
woven together. One speaks of God, and the other of the Lord 
God. One says that God created man and woman at one time, and 
the other at different times, and so on. 

It is curious, too, that the books after the Pentateuch until 
II. Kings, which was written after Kings, make no mention of 
Moses' book, and this is nearly 1,000 year's after the good father's 
time. 

Many ascribe the Pentateuch to Ezra. Another important fact 
is this, that the account which Moses gives is so nearly identical 
with similar books found among other people, it has evidently been 
copied. Thus comparing the Pentateuch with the Persian Scriptures, 
the Deluge, the Fall, the Serpent, the Six Days, are all to be found 
in the older writings of Zoroaster. 

Some say Solomon wrote the Pentateuch, and others say 
Samuel did it. The only thing that is clear is that the meek man 
himself had little or no hand in the business. The eminent Christ- 
ian Du Pin assures us that : "we are not certainly assured of the 
true authors of the Old Testament books." What confidence, then, 
shall we place in the infallibility of books whose authors we do not 
even know by name, and of whose character and standing we know 
as little as we do of either Mercury or Mars ? 

BIBLE REVELATIONS. 

The Bible is pronounced by Christian people a book of revela- 
tions. I do not doubt it. It is a revelation. It shows God as he 
revealed himself to the stiff-necked Jews. But is that the only 
revelation he has made? Would God, our God, be guilty of so small 
an act as to reveal himself only to an insignificant number of such 
ignorant and obstinate people as the Children of Israel? Must all 
the other people of the earth trudge along in the world without 
God's revelation? Certainly not. He has been revealing himself in 
various ways from the time the morning stars first sang their songs 
together. He has revealed himself one way to the Pagan, another 
way to the Hindoo, another to the Persian, and still another to the 
Chinese. He reveals himself to one as well as the other, but to no 
two alike. The Jews give us God only as they look at 7dm, or in 
other words, as they make him. The Mahometans and the Pagans 
with different tastes, different interests and education, of course, 
present him in a different phase entirely. 

BIBLE INDECENCIES. 

But the worst to be said of the Old Testament I have not yet 
mentioned. The most devout Christian in the world, if he knows 



28 THE BIBLE. 

enough to count ten, knows that the Old Testament is filled with 
most unconscionable lies, not only improbable but impossible things. 
But it is possible that he does not know that the Old Testament is 
a very indecent book, and a work not always proper to put into any 
person's hands. It is possible Christians do not generally under- 
stand this fact, for the simple reason that they have grown up 
in the faith, and believe that the Bible is a perfect book. But if 
they will take out certain passages to be found in the Old Testament 
and let them stand upon their own platform, aside from any 
surroundings, they will soon see that no more indecent language, 
no more gross, impure and pernicious sentiments ever appeared in 
print than can be found in the Old Testament. Whoever denies this 
is qualified to deny anything. 

I will not quote. I should be ashamed to quote. I only refer. 
Let those who delight in such select reading hunt up the passages 
and satisfy themselves. Take Gen. ix. 20; xiv. 1; xvii. 9; xix. 1; 
xxx. 1; xxxi. 19; xxxiv. 1; xxxv. 22; xxxviii. 6; Lev. xv.l; Lev. 
xx. 1; Xum. xxv. 1; Xum. v. 12; Deut. xxii. 13; xxiii. 12; Judges, 
xix. 22; xxi. 11; II. Sam. xi. 2; xiii. 1; xvi. 20; Psalms, xxxviii. 
3; Ezek., xvi. 

Let the reader examine these chapters and then say, if he can, 
that the evil of such passages does not do more harm to the young 
than alf the good that surrounds them; let him say also, if he will, 
that the Old Testament is a suitable book for families to read. This 
is an unpleasant fact, as unpleasant to me as to anybody, but nobody, 
we hope, will undertake to deny it unless he feels able to refute it. 

BIBLE INFALLIBILITY. 

How should the Bible be infallible? How should its accounts 
be correct? How should its various parts correspond? Bishops and 
saints, councils and common people have all taken their turns at 
correcting, amending, and interpolating the Bible. From the time 
of Ezra down to the present time they have been busy — and how 
much before Ezra, Heaven only knows. Amend the book of God ! 
What impudence and conceit ! Have all the correctors and com- 
mentators been inspired? After century upon century of wrangling, 
interminable controversies and biblical changes, how shall we 
know what of all that is left is God's word, or what is the word of 
some of his saints? How shall we know where the word of fallible 
man begins, and where the word of infallible God ends? 

Is the fact that the Bible contains so many good things a proof 
of its divine character? Are there not doctrines elsewhere as true, 
as pure and as noble as any you can find in the Bible? But*' if the 
Bible is divine because of its holy and righteous doctrines, what 



THE BIBLE. 29 

inference shall we derive from the fact that it contains, the Old 
Testament particularly, some very. wicked teachings, and sets for- 
ward as models of piety and morality some of the most immoral and 
heartless men that history speaks of? 

What are the internal evidences that the Bible, as a book, is 
inspired and infallible? So far from being the work of some God, 
who is supremely wise, supremely just and good, it is a document 
just as wicked and misshapen as poor, mortal and feeble man is 
accustomed to prepare. So far from its being unique in its 
character and without a parallel, every civilized and book-writing 
people in the world has a similar holy book of its own, precisely like 
it in character, and no doubt similar to it in origin. The old Greeks 
have written of their wars, their rebellions, their lusts, their loves, 
their triumphs, their defeats, their troubles, their trials. So have 
the Egyptians, so have the Persians, so have the Hindoos and 
Chinese. They, too, have had their lawgivers, their scribes, th« ir 
reformers, their benefactors, their despots, their heroes. The 
Hebrews have given, in their Scriptures, their history just as any 
people might have given theirs. Their historians have rehearsed 
just what the historians of any other people might have rehearsed, 
with equal emphasis and propriety, concerning their fathers. No, 
there can be no infallibility in a book constructed as # our Bible is. 
It is the work of as many hands as Argus had eyes. Each author's 
imprint is plain enough on the production he has contributed. 
There is no mistaking the fact that no one God wrote, nor did any 
one God dictate, such incongruous sentiments as these. What is 
affirmed in one place is denied in another, and what is put forth in 
one shape here, is set forth in a far different manner elsewhere. 
CHILDREN OF ISRAEL. 

The idea that the children of Israel are a chosen people, is a 
piece of the most astonishing vanity. Who believes, what devout 
Christian of intelligence believes in his heart, that the children 
of Israel are any more the chosen of God than are the children of 
any other man? And, by the way, if God is not able to do better by 
his favorite people than he has done by the poor despised Jews, I 
would rather join the hosts of some more powerful monarch. 

The Children of Israel ! What people ever treated their 
sovereign with greater indignity and contempt than the Jews treated 
God? Why they even killed his only son, the one whom he had sent 
into the world to save sinners ! But a person would suppose by read- 
ing the Bible that the Jews were about the only people that God ever 
had much concern about. There may have been a few other wild 
men scattered about, but the Bible is very careful to tell us little or 



30 THE BIBLE. 

nothing about them. It is the Jews only, the Jews. But if profane 
history may be believed, the Jews were never known as a separate 
people until they were subdued by the Romans. Though of 
course in existence long before, they had done nothing to entitle 
them to the, consideration of other people. They lived a life, it 
would seem, somewhat akin to that of our wandering Gypsies. 

As a model of disobedient and wayward children, the Jews are 
hard to beat. If they were raised up merely to demonstrate God's 
charity and forbearance, they were a first-class success. They were 
reared in rebellion, and they have played their part without missing 
a single step or line. They worshiped God when they got into 
difficulty, and only idols at other times. They lost a good portion 
of their Scriptures, and burnt the rest of them. Surely if any 
people ever did need God's care and direction, these miserable Jews 
did. I do not wonder at all that it took all of God's time to look 
after these unrepentant sinners of old. So it is not so strange after 
all that we read little of other people in the Bible besides the Jews. 

MAHOMETANISM. 

Nothing will so well serve to enable us to fix the true value 
to our own Scriptures and religion as to understand the history and 
character of Mahometanism, a religion which runs closer to ours 
and more nearly parallel with it than any other leading belief in the 
world. Some of its chief features we proceed to notice now. 

Before the time of Mahomet, the Arabs, a people by no means 
so insignificant as we have been wont to consider them, had adopted 
principally the belief of the Sabians, though among them were also 
many Jews, Christians and followers of the Magi. The Sabians 
believed in a single God, but they adored stars, as do the East 
Indians and others now. They had a multitude of inferior deities, 
somewhat akin to our angels, saints and demons, and akin likewise 
to the heroes of the Greeks. They believed in praying much. 
They believed in future punishments. They believed in baptisms, 
pilgrimages and sacrifices. Of our Scriptures they adopted the 
Psalms only, but they had several books of their own, among them 
a work on morals, called the book of Seth. They claimed to be 
followers of John the Baptist. But the Arabs consider their re- 
ligious state previous to Mahomet one of great ignorance. 

Among these ancient Arabs there was a strange mixture of the 
worship of God and the worship of idols, household gods and 
planets. Some believed in a creation and final resurrection, and 
others did not. Christianity had made much progress among them 
before Mahomet. Many before him had rejected idolatry. 

When we come to the doctrines of Mahomet we shall see that 



THE BIBLE. 31 

he only embodied and put into shape what had been believed and 
adopted by many of his people for centuries. He created no 
religion. He only reformed, improved and established one. He 
established in his Koran the doctrines of many different sects living 
in his country. Perhaps we are not going far from the truth in 
saying, that his religion and that of the Jews had a common origin, 
and are based upon the same principles. 

Mahomet considered himself the prophet of God, the prophet 
par excellence. Adam, Noah, Abraham and Christ were the re- 
maining four. He adopted the Psalms, the books of Moses and the 
Gospels, but with a very great variation from the common Christian 
version. He claims that the Jews and Christians have shamefully 
falsified their book, and that they have left out much, notably that 
which tells of Mahomet. He took much from the Apocryphal 
books and much from tradition. 

The main articles of belief set forth in his Koran are these : 
He believes in God, also in his Angels, his Scriptures, his Prophets, 
the Besurrection and Day of Judgment; and finally, he believes in the 
absolute decrees of God and Predestination in full. Prayer, alms, 
fastings and pilgrimages, are especially enjoined. The Mahometans 
also believe, as it would seem, in a resurrection not only of man, 
angels and genii, but also of animals. They believe not only in a 
Satan, but also in his fall for refusing to render homage to Adam. 
They believe in a hell with seven stages. God is pictured in the 
Koran as even more terrible than he is in our own Bible. 

But above these there is another article of faith, more important 
than any yet mentioned. They are taught first of all that the 
Koran is, like our book, of divine origin, that the first copy has 
existed from all eternity near the throne of God, written upon a 
table of great dimensions; that a copy of this table, written in a 
volume of paper, was borne by the Angel Gabriel into the lowest 
heaven, and that from that heaven he has communicated it to 
Mahomet the Prophet — sometimes at Mecca, sometimes at Medina, 
and running through a space of twenty-three years. They regard 
the Koran as a real miracle, somewhat like the one found by Joe 
Smith, the Mormon. They worship the Koran. Like the Jews 
with their Scriptures, they handle the Koran with the tenderest 
care. They would not touch it with unclean hands. They are very 
careful that it does not fall into the hands of infidels. They carry 
it with them in war. It is their guardian angel, their God. How 
different they are from us in this respect ! How little do we believe 
our Bible came from God, how little homage do we pay to it ! It is 
no divine book for us. We see no difference between it and other 



32 THE BIBLE. 

good books. It is true our ancestors had a holy regard for it, but 
modern Christians, unless very ignorant, have long since lost all 
such devotion. 

Shall we not learn something from this brief resume of Mahom- 
etan creeds? The Mahometans, as a people, are not to be despised. 
They have numbers, they have strength, they have also intelligence 
and virtue. And yet they take as the basis of their religious belief 
the Koran, a work which we know was written by human hands 
not more than twelve centuries ago. They say it came from God, 
and they believe it, but they cannot prove it. But, have we any 
better evidence for the authenticity of our Scriptures? They take 
as next to God one who we know was clearly of mortal origin. 
AVkile they believe many things in our religion, what is most im- 
portant to us they reject, tlte belief in Christ the Messiah. To them 
he is only a prophet ! How shall we prove that they are wrong in 
what they reject, and we are right in what we accept? They have 
before them as much evidence as we have, if not more. Moreover, 
they are not heathens. 

In reviewing the history of their Koran, as well as the history of 
many similar books, we see how easy it is to make a numerous 
people believe that a book, or its contents, is direct from God ! The 
only real advantage we have over the Mahometans lies in the fact 
that we have placed the foundations of our creed so far back in the 
darkness of antiquity that it is impossible to secure any evidence as 
to its true character and origin. We have asserted what no one can 
deny; and any one can deny what we cannot prove. But that of 
itself demonstrates nothing. 

BIBLE CONTRADICTIONS. 

Nothing can prove so incontrovertibly the human origin of the 
Bible, as opposed to a single divine source, as the immensity of its 
contradictions. It is a most wonderful aggregation of contrarieties, 
a simple mass of strange and irreconcilable assumptions. The 
Bible is not only the work of a multitude of human authors, but 
they had no plan between them, no concert of action. The Bible, 
instead of being a book, is only a collection of books. Where the 
contradictions are so numerous and often so monstrous, a few of 
them here will suffice to illustrate the point and show what I mean 
by the charge. 

Jeremiah tells us, God himself speaking, "lam weary with 
repenting. " — xv; 1. But Isaiah informs us that God "fainteth not, 
neither is weary." — xi: 28. Proverbs say "the eyes of the Lord are 
in every place." — xv: 3. But in Genesis "the Lord came down to see 
the city and the tower." — xi. 5. In Acts we see that God " knows 



THE BIBLE. 33 

the heart of men." — i. 24. But in Deut. we are plainly told that 
he kept the children of Israel in the wilderness forty years chiefly 
"to know what was in their hearts." — viii. 2. John tells us as plain 
as words can make it, that "no man hath seen God at any time." — 
i. 18, but Genesis tells of repeated personal interviews between God 
and Moses and others. — Ex. xxxiii. 22 and 11, and Gen. xxxii. 30. 

Matthew tells us that "with God all things are possible," but if 
we read the Old Testament, we shall find hundreds of things that 
God could not possibly do. For instance, he could not drive out 
the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron. — 
Judges i. 19. In some places we are told that " I am the Lord and 
change not," and in another place we are told how sorry he felt for 
the mistakes he had made. Here we are told "the Lord is a man of 
war," and there that "he is love," "the God of peace;" here, "those 
that seek me early shall find me;" there, they shall seek me early 
but shall not find me;" here, we are told that "the Lord is upright" 
and it is "impossible for God to lie;" and there, "I frame evil and 
devise, a device against you." 

Christ tells us "not to resist evil," "but he made a scourge of 
small cords and drove them all out of the temple." In one place, 
"all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword;" and in 
another, "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garments and buy 
one." He tells us to "be not afraid of them that kill the body," but 
he "would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him." 

We find all sorts of instruction in the Bible : Marriage is honor- 
able — it is good for man not to touch a woman ; let your light shine 
— you had better keep dark; be circumcised — be not circumcised; 
thou shalt make two cherubims of gold — you need do no such thing; 
use a little wine — wine is a mocker; servants, oblige your master in 
all things: — be ye not the servants of men ; this is Elias which was 
to come — this is not Elias at all ; take no shoes or staves with you — 
take a staff only, and sandals too; they gave Christ vinegar to drink 
— no, they did not, they gave him wine; he went and hanged him- 
self — no, he did not hang himself, he burst his bowels, and that's 
the way Judas died ; it was a young man in the sepulcher — or rather 
it was two angels in white ; Abraham had two sons — but Isaac was 
the only son he ever had; the Lord gave the land to Abraham for- 
ever — but he would not allow him to put his foot on it; Jesus and 
his father are one — but the father is greater than Christ ; all power 
is given unto Christ, in heaven and earth — but "he could there do no 
mighty work;" by the deeds of the law no people shall be justified 
— the doers of the law shall be justified; there is no man that sin- 

neth not — whoever is born of God doth not commit sin ; the dead 

3 



34 TEE BIBLE. 

shall be raised — lie that goeth down to the grave shall rise no more ; 
there shall no evil happen to the just — but ye shall be hated for my 
name's sake; blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, wealth and 
riches shall be in his house — blessed be ye poor, lay not up for 
yourselves treasures upon earth; wisdom's ways are ways of pleas- 
antness — in wisdom is much grief; Elijah went up into heaven — 
no, that's a mistake, for "no man hath ascended up to heaven but 
the Son of Man." 

We might go much further, but we have given enough to show 
that the Bible is full of instruction. If we want to know what to 
do, we must read the Bible. That will tell us. The Bible is the book 
of life. He that reads, understands and follows it shall have eternal 
life. Nothing can be safer than a promise like this. 
CONCLUDING KEFLECTIONS. 

The Bible is no miracle. There is nothing unnatural in its 
history, nothing remarkable in its contents. It is simply a collection 
of sacred writings. It embodies the sentiments of devout men who 
lived in ages very remote. It is filled with lessons of instruction, is 
full of the teachings of God. The Bible is indeed a revelation. 
God is revealing himself to us every day. Nature unfolds itself like a 
scroll. Revelation never ceases. Bible revelation is only one phase of 
science. It is science that comes not from study and inquiry, but 
from thought and reflection. It is simply an outpouring of the 
soul. It embodies in itself the first, simplest, purest and best 
teachings of the heart. 

In one sense, it is all the work of heaven ; in another sense none 
of it is so. That all of its writers were impelled by an inward 
power which we may ascribe to God, I do not for a moment doubt. 
That any of its writers were more than ordinary men, born of this 
world, with this world's imperfections; that any of them had pre- 
rogatives never accorded to man since then, is what I do not for a 
moment believe. 

The Bible has not made man what he is. It is rather the reverse 
of this that has happened. Man has made the Bible what it is, or 
perhaps the one has reacted upon the other. As I have hinted 
before, it is not a single, unchangeable whole. It is a growing pro- 
duction. From feeble beginnings it has come to be the great Bible 
that it is. Men of different generations have adopted only that which 
was in harmony with their own spirit, that which suited their pur- 
poses best. It is thus that the Jews have one Bible, the Protestants 
one, and the Catholics another. The principle of selection in Bible 
writings has operated from the most distant times. There has 
always been abundance of material to choose from, and abundance 
of objectionable writings to be rejected. So the Bible is a repre- 



THE BIBLE. 35 

sentative book. It speaks to the heart ; it comes from the heart. 
What is not in harmony with our soul we discard. The Bible needs 
constant revision, constant improving, constant correction and 
amendment. It never needed this more than it does now. Where 
there is so much pure gold to remain, why should the dross be left 
to encumber and conceal the true metal? It would be sad to lose 
the whole of the good book, merely because of the amount of 
antiquated trash it contains. How much better is it to remove an 
excrescence in season than to suffer it to outgrow and encumber the 
whole body. 

It is a curious fact that religion and religious practices are the 
offshoot of ignorance. The more intelligent and the more thought- 
ful people become, the more rapidly religion disappears and is lost. 
Religion at best is only a form of superstition. It springs out of 
the fears and doubts of those who know little of nature and less of 
themselves. What they fail to understand they readily imagine. 
We esteem it the mark of a savage to worship idols. But how 
much better than idolaters are we? What difference does it make 
about the precise number of our Gods? Suppose the Pagans had 
fifty Gods, do we not have three? Yea, and more than three. Is 
the Jewish God better than some heathen Gods? 

It is impossible to show a religion that has not arisen in the 
lowest walks of life, the very dregs of society — oftentimes not only 
from among the most stupid, but the very worst of men. Certainly 
the saints of the Old and New Testaments are no exception to the 
rule. But this is one of God's mysterious ways of doing things. 
He has made wonderful instruments of the most ordinary men, but 
the fact remains still potent and uncontrovertible, that among all 
people religion at the outset is the work of ignorance. In the face 
of science, religion, in its true sense, always tends to disappear. 

It is not surprising, then, to find religions always founded in 
mysteries and shrouded in darkness. The Pagans had their myster- 
ies, their offerings and offices. Had not the Jews theirs, and have 
not also we? What is more mysterious than for us to drink the 
blood and eat the flesh of Christ four or five times a year without 
affecting his existence in the least? And then, a few drops of com- 
mon cold water, what a mysterious effect that has ! 

No wonder then that the Jews, who it is agreed found our re- 
ligion for us, were known through all time as the most ignorant, 
credulous, intolerant and wretched people of antiquity, about the 
only ones in the world who have left absolutely nothing behind them 
but a mere Greek Bible, an elaborate and apparently learned treatise 
on the suoject of "getting to heaven made easy." 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



CHAPTER II. 

ITS RECORDS. 
We come now to discuss more especially the character of the 
Old Testament, the oldest, the most important, and the fundamental 
portion of the Holy Bible. It is not our purpose to deny or reject 
these records. The accounts are there, and the doctrines are there; 
and it is not in our province to contradict them. In ordinary records 
of this kind, it would be a matter of small consequence who wrote 
them; their authority would depend upon their intrinsic and inherent 
worth, rather than upon the source from which they came. But in 
this case it is different. Here the whole matter turns upon the 
question whether the authors of these scriptures were not blessed 
with a peculiar and divine inspiration. This question of the super- 
natural origin of the Bible, we have already sufficiently discussed in 
the preceding sections. It is the extraordinary doctrines which it 
contains, together with some strange accounts assumed to be matters 
of fact, that will now engage our attention. 

THE CREATION. 

The creation of the world out of nothing, if so we must interpret 
our Scriptures, is an abstraction reserved chiefly, if not solely, for the 
Jews and their followers. In the Cosmogony of other people it is a 
growth from a seed or an egg, a development, a metamorphosis. 
But in the Bible it is a creation. There is no forming here, no ap- 
plication of the plastic power. It goes back to the beginning of 
the world, to the time when the world had no beginning, when the 
world was nothing, when it was not a world, and when, of course, 
there could have been no God to make a world. 

But, is it possible for us to conceive that a thing which never 
exists in some form, did not at one time exist in any form ? Our 
ideas come from what we see in our experience ; they are determined 
by the constitution of our minds. Is it then in the nature, of things, 
is it in our experience, to see things start up, as the world did, out 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 37 

of nothing, to see them begin without having a beginning, and with- 
out something on which transformation or creation might rest ? All 
the creation of which we can have any just idea is the birth, 
development, and coming to light of that which was lost in darkness 
before. We trace the tree back to the acorn that was put in the 
ground. We never, however, think of the time when there were no 
acorns, nor trees to produce acorns. 

Every intelligent man of the present day admits that nothing 
has been created since the world began, neither of force nor matter. 
Nothing begins in a time when it was not, nor ends in a time when it 
will not be. It is impossible for us to think of a body moving 
without having some other moving body to set it in motion. Nor 
can we think of the moving power itself acting unless impelled by 
some other acting power. Thus, when we see the seared and fallen 
leaf hurried along upon the earth, we know that there is a power 
behind it; and when we trace the origin of its action to the breeze, 
we are equally certain that some other disturbing force caused that 
breeze by setting the air in motion. Again, when the pebble breaks 
the surface of the smooth water, the disturbance is sent out in 
concentric whorls, which multiply and swell until they reach the 
very shore. Here they are lost to sight, but we cannot say that 
they have even there ceased to exist. They beat against the land 
and communicate to it their own vibrations. These waves travel 
over the earth with as much certainty as upon the water; they are 
only less perceptible. They lose their force, but not their existence 
or identity. The thunder wave beats from hill, to hill, rolling for- 
ward and returning again, until it is finally lost to our ears. Who 
will say that weeks and years after this, its sounds might not still be 
detected by ears sufficiently sensitive and acute? 

Beginning and end, and, of course, creation too, have, for the 
scientific world at least, come to have a different signification from 
what they once had. They are known to us now only as heathenish, 
nay, Jewish ideas. Whoever prepared the Scriptures understood 
no such ideas as these of the present day, and, of course, he could 
not build his superstructure upon them. For the world who never 
knew these truths, it was possible to accept the Hebrew Cosmogony, 
but how is it possible for us, with a different experience, and a 
different culture? We cannot, even with the help of faith, believe 
to be true that which all our life has taught us is not in the nature of 
things even possible. To believe in a God who does impossible 
things, is to believe in an impossible God. Those who wrote the 
Bible, as well as those who believe it, so far from finding this 
history of creation at variance with their ideas of nature and with 



38 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

their education, found a remarkable harmony existing between the 
two. People never began to lose their faith in this Mosaic account, 
until they began to lose faith in the philosophy and science by which 
it was begotten. 

We have thus far seen that the origin of the earth, as stated by 
Moses is, as a fact in nature, entirely outside the region of human belief. 
Let us now see on what slender evidence the assertion rests. Let us 
take up the book of Genesis. He that wrote that book, say it was 
Moses for the present, speaks of the most sublime phenomena within 
the range of human conception, as if they were the most ordinary 
things of every day life. The creation of the earth, nay, of the 
universe, the separation of darkness from light, the gathering of the 
mighty deep into its place, what could be more sublime than this? 
Yet this is all brought out as the most common-place story. There 
seems to have been, in the mind of the writer, nothing in this 
account that was strange, nothing demanding explanation, nothing 
doubtful. All was apparently, in his mind, plain, direct, probable ! 
It is no mere hearsay, that awful work, those six days labor and the 
rest of the seventh ! It is evidently the account of an eye witness. 

Moses speaks of the creation as an eye witness, but we know he 
was not. Is not his very assurance here, in a matter of necessity so 
very dark, a most fatal circumstance? If his imagination was poetic 
here, may it not have been poetic in thousands of other places? If 
he relied on tradition and hearsay here without acknowledging it, 
might he not have relied upon them in many other cases? You see 
how fatal it must be to let go our hold on a single one of the 
accounts of Moses, or the Bible. It is all one book. It is all of 
God, or none. When once the door is open, it can never be closed. 
If you allow criticism to enter and cast out one passage, it can never 
be stopped till it is permitted to cast out the whole book. 

We must be allowed to continue our examination of this Mosaic 
account of the creation. It is evident that the writer was only 
reciting his own fictions, the visions of his own fancy, or perhaps 
the unrecorded traditions of his fathers. He has given us, like so 
many before him and since, his theory, and no more; a theory based 
on principles unknown to the science of the present day, a theory 
built upon doctrines and assumed facts which only a child would 
now embrace. 

We notice it is observed that the firmament separates the waters 
of the earth from the waters of the heavens, the unfailing source 
from which rain was supposed to come. It was not dreamed by 
Moses even that rain fell from clouds which had risen to the upper 
regions of the air by the force of evaporation. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 39 

Is it not incomprehensible to us of this generation that there 
should have been darkness and light, evening and morning, that the 
earth should have brought forth grass and the herb given its seed 
three days before the sun, the great source to us of light and life, 
should have come into existence? And what strange trees those 
were which brought forth fruit before they or the earth itself was 
even three days old. It may be said these were all miracles. Yet 
we do not like to have things too miraculous. Everybody now-a- 
days has a strong fancy for those miracles only which can be 
sensibly construed. 

It is strange, too, we must confess, that the sun, moon and stars, 
some of them known to be prodigious bodies and many times as 
large as the earth, should be mere night-lamps set in the heavens 
to give us light and divide the day from the night ! Moses evidently 
had no better conception of these " lamps" than the merest child. 
That they were habitable worlds like ours, having a cource of 
existence and an aim wholly their own, was a thought which could 
never have entered his mind when he wrote, if he did write, those 
" five books of Moses." That great idea of a community of worlds 
was left to struggle on yet many thousand years before its final 
birth took place. It could not be, we know, that an omniscient 
being wrote in this manner. 

Our earth and all the surrounding worlds, according to Moses, 
was created by God in six short days, at the end of which brief 
space of time, man himself was introduced as the climax to the 
whole. But Geology shows, and no one of ordinary intelligence 
denies it, that as many thousand years as Moses has named days, 
and perhaps many thousands more, this world must have gone 
through terrible changes and convulsions before the appearance of 
man. Here again is the conception of Moses child-like and charac- 
teristic of the mind in its feeblest infancy. Certainly here also 
he could have received no aid from an omniscient God. Why must 
we be forced to believe on faith what the good sense of every man 
pronounces fabulous ? 

Again, God rested on the seventh day. The six days' labors, to 
the mind of the writer, seem to have been for God in the highest 
degree exhaustive. He was evidently tired out, and so he rested 
on the Sabbath. Indeed, have we any account that God has done 
any hard labor since? Has he created a single thing, either force or 
matter, since that fatal sixth day? The Bible gives no account of 
it if he has. This work, as Moses would inform us, was a physical 
operation. His labors since have been strictly mental — unless per- 
haps we should take into account his frequent journeys from heaven 



40 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

to earth to interview Moses and the Prophets. So Moses' idea of God 
was that of a mighty man, one who could be worn out with exces- 
sive exertion; a mighty man, but a man nevertheless. He was not 
that being of all wisdom, the beginning and its source, which we 
have usually considered him to be. 

In closing this section we will notice, very briefly, the cos- 
mogony of some other people. It is with a feeling of pride that a 
Christian writer informs us "that none of the ancient philosophers 
had the smallest idea of its being possible to produce a substance 
out of nothing, or that even the power of the deity himself could 
work without any materials to work upon." The Greeks and 
Romans believed the matter of the world to be eternal, and that 
God made and changed only its form. Men were not created; they 
grew from the sowing of dragon's teeth, or were formed out of clay. 

According to the Puranas, one of the sacred books of India, 
the earth was buried from sight in the waters of a mighty ocean. 
The God, at the request of the Earth, raised it from its depths and 
placed it on the surface of the water, where it floated like a mighty 
ship. By meditation, that is by concentrated thought, Brama 
created animals. All creatures both great and small proceeded from 
his members. 

The Laws of Manu, the title of another sacred book of India, 
contains writings perhaps much older than most of our Scriptures, 
and is supposed to be written from twelve to fifteen centuries before 
Christ. According to this record, "This world was plunged in an 
obscurity; it was imperceptible, deprived of every distinctive at- 
tribute. Xot being able to be discovered by reasoning, nor to be 
revealed to the eye, it seemed entirely delivered over to sleep." 
"Then the Lord dissipated the obscurity and rendered the world 
perceptible, i. e. he developed its nature." "And having resolved 
to cause the different creatures to emanate from his substance, he 
produced first the waters in which de deposited a germ.'''' "This 
germ became an egg shining as gold, bright as a star with a thous- 
and rays, and in this the supreme being, Brama, was born," a being 
independent of the developing spirit above mentioned. He became 
the progenitor of all beings. By the separation of an egg into two 
parts the heavens and the earth were formed; between them were 
placed the atmosphere, the eight celestial regions and the perman- 
ent reservoir of waters. Among other things this God produced a 
multitude of other Gods, wich an active soul, and besides this an 
irresistible horde of genii. Having divided his body into two parts 
he became male and female. Brama makes and destroys all things; 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 41 

he is the beginning and the end. The world is assumed to be a 
wicked place, full of misery and evil. Manu tells us of not less 
than twenty-eight hells. 

The cosmogony of Budda is not essentially different from that 
of Brama. The details are different, but the thought and plan is 
nearly the same. 

In the Zend Avesta of Zoroaster there is a good spirit, Ormuzd, 
to create, and an evil one to destroy and vitiate, Ahriman. So the 
former is the author of day and light, and the latter of shades and 
darkness. 

We have noticed these features of other scripture history to 
show that the idea of the world's having a beginning or a birth was 
by no means peculiar to the Israelites. Perhaps no people who have 
scriptures have not also an account of the creation of the world, or 
its first appearance. In all, too, the plan is the same, the details 
only are different. These accounts we are almost inclined to laugh 
at as ridiculous; we are certain at least that they are only flights of 
a lively imagination. But wherein consists the superiority of our 
own account? 

When we come to the creation of man, we find a little of what 
we might call "inextricable confusion." The first chapter of 
Genesis runs along smoothly and satisfactorily, but when we come 
to the second we get into trouble. Is it a mere useless repetition of 
facts mentioned in the first, or is it an amendment, or an improve- 
ment by some other author? The first ends and the second begins 
with the work all done; "the heavens and the earth were finished 
and all the host of them." We would think in the fourth verse of 
the second chapter that we could begin Monday of the second week. 
But we are told further along, that man, who had been created male 
and female, a compound being, a hermaphrodite, is again created 
from the dust of the ground. So the beasts of the field and the 
fowls were created a second time. The conclusion is certain and 
fixed, either the whole history of the affair was confused in the 
mind of the writer, or we have two separate accounts from dif- 
ferent authors. 

The story of the creation, or rather the birth, of man, we will 
not dwell on. We would simply refer to the curiosity which we 
feel to know how many intelligent creatures in the world would be- 
lieve this monstrous story to-day. But we know some people have 
believed it so far as to think that men must have one rib less upon 
one side than upon the other. You will observe, by the way, that 



42 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

the story is quite different in the first chapter, twenty-seventh verse : 
"Male and female he created them," and blessed them, and said 
"be fruitful and muliply" which implies the existence of women as 
early as the sixth day. 

THE FALL OF MAN. 

Do men believe in the fall of Adam and the occasion of it, or 
do they not? They believe it literally, or they do not believe it at 
all. To say that the tree spoken of was a fiction, is to say the whole 
story was a fable. The tree spoken of was a real one, a tree bearing 
fruit; there are no trees but real ones. So when we say that their 
story, which was told with such apparent fairness and simplicity, 
was a mere figment of the brain, a pretense and no more, we must 
let go our hold on the Scriptures forever. If this tree is only a 
figure, then every fact spoken of in the Bible may contain only a 
figure also. 

We must dwell at length upon this unhappy tree. It brought 
sin into the world — it is the beginning and source of all our miseries, 
the starting point of all our woes. God planted this tree in the 
Garden of Eden ; he placed it in a prominent place, and even called 
Adam's serious attention to it. He did more; he placed on it most 
tempting fruit, fruit that made Adam's heart ache and yearn more 
than all the other fruits put together, and then told him if he touched 
it, he would surely die ! Nay, more; he had created Adam himself, 
as he had wished him to be created, no doubt, but he had made 
him of such a weak nature that he knew, if he knew anything, it 
was impossible for him to resist temptation, at least such temptation 
as this. And all this God did for what? 

The tree was there for an awful, a wicked purpose. God know- 
eth all things, those that are past and those to come, and he knew 
from the beginning this tree and its necessary results. He knew the 
fruit- was tempting, and that our first parent could not resist the 
temptation. In placing that tree there, under all these circum- 
stances, God's act was simply sinful and malicious. We cannot call 
it anything else ; there is no misunderstanding the motive, and no 
one does misunderstand it. We have no assurance that it was 
necessary. It was voluntary. God willed it, or he was certainly 
not the Supreme Being. For what did he do this? We can only 
conjecture that it was to gratify his curiosity. It was a cruel act, 
the first of a great series of cruel acts, running through all the Old 
Testament. So God is pictured there. 

Is it possible that all this mystery of a serpent carrying on a 
lengthy conversation with Eve, and assuming to set up his authority 
as surpassing that of the Lord, and prevailing in the end over him, 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 43 

does not a little arouse our suspicions about the correctness of the 
narrative ? If this story is true, is it possible for us to conceive of 
anything so monstrous or absurd that we may not believe that true 
also ? 

But they did eat of the tree, Eve first and afterward Adam ; and 
they excused themselves by saying the serpent told them to do so. 
It seems the Lord was absent when all this happened, and he never 
had even suspected that such things could or would come to pass. 
It was a matter of surprise to him that they had happened. Adam 
hid away, but the Lord found him for all that. After his appre- 
hension, Adam confessed the whole crime; he turned state's evidence 
to save his own neck, as so many a culprit has done. He told the 
Lord the whole story. The Lord knew nothing about the affair, so 
Adam told him all about it, without concealing the least thing. 

There are many things in this rehearsal that are incomprehensi- 
ble to us. For example, we cannot see how Eve should (Genesis 
iii: 2d and 3d.) assume to know all about God's orders in reference 
to the tree, while in fact they had been given to Adam alone some 
time before Eve herself came into being. It is strange, too, that 
Adam, who had thus partaken of the forbidden fruit, should not, in 
accordance with the promise, and long before the arrival of the Lord, 
have been "surely dead." So it seems the serpent (in the 4th verse,) 
told Eve the truth after all. We are shocked in the outset at the 
want of courage, or want of faithfulness, in a being in whose conduct 
we should expect such qualities to shine pre-eminent. Adam and 
Eve, so far from dying a prompt and miserable death, as we had 
been led to expect, both lived to excuse and defend themselves. 
Not one word is said about death or any substitute for it. Adam 
lived yet 930 years. And God made clothes for him, and set him up 
in business again. 

Upon the wicked serpent the blow falls the hardest. It falls 
with a terrible crushing weight upon him. What a curse upon that 
miserable creature ! This serpent and all his seed are to be etern- 
ally wretched, far above all the other created beings of the earth. 
Such, in reference to the serpent, was the idea of ancients, and of 
the moderns after them. But the light of science is not able to-day 
to give one single distinguishing mark by which to separate the 
serpent from its class. It creeps upon the ground, and so do other 
creatures. It secretes a poison for its protection, and so do others. 
It is detested and avoided, and so are others. 

Many suppose the serpent to have been Satan; but where and 
who was Satan? We have not had the slightest mention of him 
thus far — he is not even named till many, many pages after this. 



44 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Before the eating of this fruit evil was not abroad; it was the cause 
of evil and its birth. There could have been no Satan at that ttme 
and in that place. That was paradise. No, it was a serpent; the 
Bible says so. We will admit no pictures or figures like this into the 
great book of truth, for there would be no end to it when we once 
began. 

In the 20th verse, Adam called his wife Eve, " because she was 
the mother of all," when in fact Adam had no means of knowing, 
as yet, that she was or would be the mother of anybody. 

The figure in the 21st verse, which represents the Lord making 
coats for Adam and his wife, is, to say the least, undignified. Be- 
sides, we see him a tender-hearted parent, who has already for- 
gotten, if not forgiven, the trespasses of his disobedient children. 
He is a model parent. 

In the 22d verse, it seems that man became "as one of us," as a 
God, by this simple act of disobedience. But in the 1st chapter it is 
said that man was made in God's own image, as one of us, in the 
first place. How shall we reconcile this? 

The reasons for turning man out of paradise are various and 
unsatisfactory. The whole thing here is much confused. What can 
it mean when it says, in the 22d verse, "and now, lest he put forth 
his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever." 
(Live forever ! Why, that is just what man was originally intended 
to do, and what he would have done, had he not eaten the fruit so 
foolishly.) Therefore, God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to 
till the ground ! Why, man was created in the first place to till the 
ground. — Genesis ii:5. In the 19th verse, 3d chapter, the eating of 
bread by the sweat of the brow, seems to have been a new thing, 
and part of the punishment. But in the 15th verse, 2d chapter, 
God put Adam into the Garden of Eden to dress and keep it "and 
take care of it," and how Adam could do this without starting the 
prespiration (especially on a hot July day), we fail to see. Who 
kept and dressed the garden after Adam left ? 

Is the "tree of life" (22d verse, 3d chapter,) different from the 
"tree of knowledge of good and evil," spoken of in the 17th verse, 
2d chapter ? But of every tree except this latter, he is expressly 
permitted (16th verse) to eat. So there could not have been two 
trees of forbidden fruit. Moreover, in the 29th verse, 1st chapter, 
every tree, without any exception, was given to man for meat. 

It is at least certain, from the account, that man was not turned 
out of Eden for disobedience, but for some sin which he might be 
induced to commit if he remained. He was made in the beginning 
to be like God in every respect, and yet he was punished by the 
Lord for trying to realize that equality. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 45 

For a single act of disobedience, and not willful at that, what a 
terrible retribution ! An awful penalty for the loss of an apple or 
two ! Such is the God of the Old Testament. Upon the precise 
character of that tree we cannot decide. It was a tree of knowledge 
of good or evil. That was a strange tree, and yet it bore fruit like 
other trees, and so tempting that Eve put forth her hand and ate. 
We are almost tempted to believe that this tree is- allegorical ; but if 
it was, so might be the fall of man and the creation of the world, 
and the whole Bible besides. Why not? No, it must have been 
some unaccountable tree, of which, however, no vestige remains. 
It was a tree "to be desired to make one wise." The great sin after 
all of Adam and Eve seems to have been their desire to get wisdom. 
No wonder that Christians, for so many hundred years after this, 
were opposed to every advance in science, remembering as they did 
the fate of their unfortunate ancestors. 

But must we believe that this unfortunate little accident, for it 
is all related as an accident, that this accident, we say, should have 
brought about a change in the entire realms of nature? Let us 
dwell here awhile upon this supposed origin of all evil and the 
cause of it. 

The whole teachings of the Christian world, and how far the 
Old Testament warrants them, we will not now stop to enquire, is 
upon the idea that sin came into the world through the disobedi- 
ence of Adam, the immediate cause of which way the lying serpent 
which in the end prevailed over the weakness of man's nature. 
This unfortunate, and, of course, unforeseen, accident seems to 
have deranged and reversed the whole of God's plans. He seems 
to have made no provision for such a calamity, and he was hence 
obliged to adopt an entirely new line of policy. He is, as we under- 
stand him, an all-wise and all-seeing being, and yet here we find him 
quite undone at the very outset, and overreached, by one of the 
feeblest and most repulsive of earth's creatures ! What wonderful 
weakness for such assumed wisdom ! 

But must we believe indeed that this accident brought about a 
change in the entire realms of nature? If it was a fall of man, and 
a complete revolution in his nature, there must have arisen an equal 
change and an equal revolution in the entire animal and vegetable 
kingdom in the whole creation, for everything in nature, every 
animal, is constructed upon the same plan as man, has the same 
preverseness of character, meets with the same antagonism in the 
world about, is subject to the same laws, and is heir to the same 
sufferings. The great globe itself is constructed upon a plan in 
harmony with the nature of man as he is now, and not as he was in 



46 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

the days of Paradise. Are we to suppose that if Adam had not 
sinned, fire would not have burned and water would not have 
drowned us ? Would gravity not have been present with all its fatal 
consequences, and would the storm, with its crushing force and 
wide-spread desolation, never have appeared? It is evident that 
the world was made for just such a sinful creature as Adam was, 
and that it could cot support any other. It was made for a pro- 
gressive man, a man of action, and not for the drowsy life of 
Paradise. 

Again, the Paradise of Eden was but the minutest spot on the 
face of the globe. But the Bible would have us believe that God, if 
he had not been foiled in his purpose, would have set apart this 
garden to be the sole abode of man. And was the great earth, may 
I ask, to be a desolate, unproductive waste, giving nothing and re- 
ceiving nothing in return? 

The Bible clearly intimates, in its account, that but for this 
catastrophe, the human race would never have increased in its 
numbers ; that God intended all for our first parents, and for them 
alone (though according to the 1st chapter, an entirely different ac- 
count, they were to be fruitful and multiply). "In sorrow thou 
shalt bring forth children;" that was part of the punishment — 
Genesis iii : 16. Eve was to be a mere help-meet — some one to do 
housework and dispel the loneliness of Adam, for he was lonely; she 
was not to be considered as the mother of a race which was to 
people and subdue the earth. But if this were the true and only 
object, why make Eve feminine instead of masculine? Is there 
any one who believes that Eve was created, as the Bible seems to 
tell us, simply because "it was not good for man to be alone ? " 

Let me ask further, if the fall of man had not occurred, do you 
suppose that the earth would not have brought forth any thorns 
and thistles, and would Adam and his off spring have had no need to 
eat their bread by the sweat of their brow ? 

I need hardly urge in concluding this part of our inquiry, that 
the book of nature, on all its pages, pronounces this early scriptural 
account false, fanciful and paganish in all its bearings. That such 
things did not happen, is rendered certain by the fact that they are 
impossible, to say nothing of the discredit thrown upon the whole 
thing by the looseness of the story and the antagonism of its various 
statements. 

But who presumes to write this account? Who heard what the 
serpent said, and who made a record of his precise language? God 
himself, it seems was not present, for if he had been, he would have 
closed the serpent's harangue and made him smart for his rashness. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 47 

Indeed, it does not seem that God is to be held responsible for the 
historical part of the Bible. None of it can we suppose was written 
upon the two tables. Whence then conies the minute accounts of 
particular facts and secret conversations noted in Genesis and else- 
where ? There is only one possible supposition, and that is that 
Adam kept a diary, like some of our young people of the present 
time. But there is no foundation for such a theory, save its 
possibility. 

We are taught that through this fall of Adam not only sin but 
death came into the world. This thought, we must say again, has 
its birth in the rudest ignorance of nature's laws and works. Can 
we have birth and growth, without also having decay and death ? 
Or were we to have, as seems somewhat intended, no birth and 
growth before God changed his plan ? Does not the very plan of 
creation involve the idea of death as a matter of necessity ? Did 
Adam's fate subject all the rest of the living creation to the laws of 
decay and death? 

What would have become of the earth, if animals should have 
increased upon the face of the earth, and there had been no 
diminution by death? How was it with vegetation, was there no 
decay here? Animals are so made that to live they must destroy, 
they must kill. But animals did live before Adam sinned; so they 
must have killed ; and the idea of their continuing to live implied 
the continued necessity for them to kill. Or did they swallow alive 
what they ate, as the whale did Jonah ? 

And what does Geology teach as certain more than anything 
else? It is this: that animals, great and small, lived and died upon 
this globe many, many ages before man was thought of, or at least 
before he appeared on the earth. 

We conclude then that this whole history, so far, bears upon 
its face the impress of lively fiction and poetic fancy, just such an 
impress precisely as we find placed upon the early writings of every 
nation of the earth. 

I must add, finally, that Christ and his disciples knew nothing 
of this story of the fall of man. It had even then become an 
obsolete idea. 

CAIN. 

The character of God, as Moses understood him, is pretty well 
fixed in our minds already, and we are not surprised to see God 
maintain that cruel character to the end. Let us see how he treated 
Cain. 

Without assigning any reason, he treats Cain, bringing, as he 
does, his first fruits for an offering, the best he has, with disdain. 
But Cain's brother, for aught we know no better man than Cain 



48 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

was, and with no better offering, lie treats with the highest favor. 
Do we wonder that Cain was "very wroth," and that he lost control 
over himself ? Do we wonder that Cain was a little impertinent 
and inconsiderate in his answers to God? 

What wretched trifling it was to ask Cain where Abel was. 
Did God not know where Abel was, and what Cain had done ? If 
he did not, a poor God he was surely. 

THE DELUGE. 

We turn from the picture of a God trifling and unjust, to a weak 
and vacillating one. In the the 6th chapter, it seems, God began to 
see he had made a serious mistake, not to say blunder. It repented 
him, it grieved him to his heart, that he had made man, and the 
world simply for man. Now are we taught how revengful he is. 
Because some of them had done wrong, he resolved to sweep the 
whole race of them from the face of the earth, and every created 
and creeping thing beside. 

But he changed his mind directly, not the first nor the last time, 
however, and concluded to save Noah for seed. He not only pro- 
posed to save Noah, and did save him in the end, but he allowed the 
race to go on multiplying, so that things went on very much as 
before, or worse. What an unfortunate and unhappy God he proved 
to be ! 

He told Noah, in the 13th verse, "that the end of all flesh is 
come before me." But his word turned out to be good for nothing, 
for the end of all flesh did not come. It was rather a good begin- 
ning of flesh. What can the Lord mean, in the 17th verse, when he 
says: "to destroy all Jles7i, and everything in the earth shall dieV 
Were not Noah and his family flesh? And did they die? He evi- 
dently had not the slightest intention to quite destroy all living 
beings ; he only wished to deplete their number and retard their 
growth, that was all. 

In the 4th verse, 7th chapter, he says he would destroy every 
living substance from off the face of the earth ; and yet there seems 
to have been plenty to eat for all the animals which the ark con- 
tained, when they were finally let loose. 

In the 8th verse, 7th chapter, there went in of clean beasts two 
and two, instead of by sevens, as stated in the 2d verse. It cannot 
be seven of the sort by twos, for, in the 19th verse, 6th chapter, he 
says: "two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark; they shall be 
male and female." 

We cannot but remark how precise is the accounts in the 7th 
verse, about the time of this deluge. Noah was just 600 years old; 
it was in the 2d month and on the 17th day, the hour and minute 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 49 

alone being wanting. As we read along in the account, we shall 
find that the year even thus early in the world's history was divided 
into one of twelve months like ours, and that those months had just 
thirty days each ! We had supposed before that our present system 
of years and months was of a rather later date than the age of Noah. 

The flood rose over the high hills; not a peak escaped, and 
every living creeping thing was drowned. But how with the fish ? 
Were there none, or were they drowned in the much water ? How- 
ever, we find them all alive in the 2d verse of the 9th chapter. 

There was evidently a confused idea in the mind of the author 
(there certainly must be in the mind of the reader) about the exact 
or approximate time during which the overflowing continued. 
In the 12th verse, "the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty 
nights." In the 17th, "the flood was forty days upon the earth." 
Was it other forty days ? In the 24th, "the waters prevailed upon 
the earth an hundred and fifty days," i. e. five months. In the 2d 
verse of the 8th chapter, "and after the end of the 150 days, the 
waters were abated," i. e., the old status was restored. The ark 
rested at the end of this time, five months, on Mount Ararat. (Why 
Ararat ? Was it the topmost peak of the world?). But this resting 
on Mount Ararat was only the beginning of the end, for, though we 
had been told that the waters were abated at the end of the 150 days, 
we are, in the 5th verse, told that the waters decreased continually 
until the tenth month, first day. Then the tops of the mountains 
were first seen, 73 days after the ark had struck. By so much was 
Ararat higher than all the other peaks ! 

In the 6th verse we come back to forty days. At the end of 
forty days, when the rain had ceased, Noah sent forth a raven 
"which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from 
off the earth." He must have had a sorry time of it indeed, for he 
must have kept flying about, the Lord knows where, for not less than 
183 days before he could so much as rest his foot on the mountain 
tops. This is all a miracle ! Some may say it was forty days after the 
10th month of the 5th verse. But that could not be, for we are told 
the dove could not find a place to rest the sole of her foot, though 
going forth after the raven, the waters being not abated, i. e., on the 
whole face of the earth. In the 11th verse, 8th chapter, the dove 
brought in an olive leaf, which must surprise any one, since every 
"living substance," 23d verse, 7th chapter, had been destroyed, and 
all the trees must have drowned out entirely in so many months of 
flood. But why, after ail this, must Noah send out these birds, 
when he might as well have put his head out of the window as his 
hand or the raven, and thus have seen how things looked ? And 

4 



50 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

who ever had a better point of observation than he, being, as he 
was, on the topmost peak of the world ? But, in the 13th verse, he 
did, after a while, take a look, but it was only after he had removed 
the whole roof of the ark. 

Who shall relieve us from the difficulties which we experience 
with regard to the time this flood lasted ? We have forty days, one 
hundred and fifty days, and other times named, and finally the earth 
does not seem to have dried after all till very nearly a year from the 
time the flood began. 

It is needless to dwell at length upon the impossibility, in the 
nature of things, that such a deluge could have happened. The 
heavens, we now know, are not made solely of waters, as Moses 
supposed. Again, the water covered the whole earth, the highest 
mountain tops, a vast shell of water around all the earth, not less 
than five miles deep. Now, when it abated, where did the water go 
to ? We have learned that water can only sink in one place by its 
rising in another. Or is nothing too absurd for a miracle ? They 
supposed that the small region of country round about Ararat was 
all there was of the mighty globe. Or why flood the whole earth 
to drown this insignificant spot upon its face, why this mighty 
commotion to waft a feather or drown a fly ? One thing is at least 
certain, if all this story is true, then science is unavailing. 

We have dwelt so long on this, not only to show that it must be 
a fiction, a fabrication, or a dream, but that the Bible writers are 
fond of such fictions. In this case, they have either magnified a 
partial flood into a universal deluge, or they have seen the whole in 
a vision. 

We come next to the 21st verse. Here the Lord smelled a sweet 
savor, and it pleased him very much, and he said, in the joy of his 
heart, ' 'I will not again curse the ground for man's sake, for the 
imagination of man's heart is evil from Ms youth." He now begins 
to feel sorry evidently for what he had done, not the first or the 
last time, however. He now sees, for the first time, that men are 
born wicked, and they cannot help being so. 

The first thing God says in the next chapter is, "Be faithful and 
multiply and replenish the earth." This is curious, seeing that he 
had just drowned the whole earth, and it had repented him that he 
had made man at all. Now he wants the earth replenished with the 
same stock, with people full as wicked as any he had drowned, if 
not more so ! God's ways, if this be true, are surely incompre- 
hensible ! 

Now we come to the strangest thing of all (13th verse, 19th 
chapter): Although the earth had existed for manj r hundred years, 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 51 

and it had rained repeatedly, forty days even at one time, yet there 
had been no rainbow. Here is mythology for you ! The writer of 
course knew nothing of the origin or the nature of the rainbow. 
He says it was put in the heavens, after the deluge for the first, so 
that the Lord might see it occasionally, and not forget that covenant 
of his. He will "look upon it and remember" (16th verse). God, 
you will observe here and after, did not ask man to take his own 
bare word, for it could not be relied on. So he makes his mark 
some way, or puts it in writing, as men do with their deeds and 
covenants, or he gives some other pledge of fulfillment. Here it is 
the rainbow; with Moses it was in writing, or on tables of stone. 

The Jews are by no means alone in their account of a deluge. 
All people have floods ; we have them occasionally in our own day. 
There was the Deluge of Deucalion. He also built a ship and saved 
himself and wife. He was tossed about for nine days, and landed 
at last on Mount Parnassus. But in his case the earth was replen- 
ished by him and his wife throwing stones behind them, which 
became men and women. 

In the Parana, a sacred book of the Hindoos, older by far than 
our own Bible, we have an account like this: Vishnu, the God, 
appeared before a certain prince in the form of a little fish, and 
said, "in seven days all creatures who have offended me shall be 
destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be saved in a vessel, strangely 
formed. Take therefore supplies of all kinds, seven holy men and 
their wives, and pairs of animals and enter into this vessel." 

It is clear enough that other people had their picture as well as 
the Jews. 

BABEL. 

That story of Babel is a very pretty, not to say amusing, fable, 
invented to account for what was before enveloped in darkness, the 
diversity of tongues. This is one of the very many things in the 
Bible which will put all science to shame. The diversity of tongues, 
we know as well as we know any fact, arises in the very nature of 
things, and we need not refer it to any tower of Babel for explana- 
tion. This diversity takes its origin in circumstances which were 
at work as well before the confusion of tongues as ever it was 
after that. There is not, we venture to affirm, in the wide world a 
single philologist of any note who does not ignore this whole history 
of Babel, so far, at least, as it concerns any question of language. 
But it goes very far to illustrate the nature of the whole Mosaic 
record, showing that it is merely a collection of theories to account 
for things of whose nature people in remote ages were ignorant, but 
in the history of which they felt a deep concern. 



52 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

It is generally conceded that the Lord confounded their 
language as a punishment for their assuming to build a tower to lead 
up to heaven, and so escape another deluge, but we can hardly see 
that the text sustains this rendering. They proposed (4th verse) to 
build not a tower only, but a city, "lest they be scattered abroad 
upon the face of the earth/' The building went along smoothly we 
may suppose for a while, but finally the Lord, who evidently had 
had his attention turned elsewhere all the while, "came down to 
see the city and the town which the children of men builded." To 
whom did the Lord address these words, and why ? The Lord con- 
fused their tongues and scattered them abroad, "and they left off to 
build the city.'' The main offense seems to be that they were 
building a city. The remedy, we must say. was a strange one, and 
the whole thing is curious and wonderful. Why did he not 
promptly stop the thing in its inception ? More mythology ! 

The ancient Latins have a similar story, but with more varia- 
tions. Otos and Ephialtes, when only nine years old, great giants 
as they were, endeavored to ascend into heaven, and for this purpose 
they piled Ossa upon Pelion, and other mountains beside. But they 
were slain by the arrows of Apollo — they did not have their lan- 
guage confused at all. The great God of the ancients put a stop to 
the business without ceremony. 

There are' a great many questions about this dark and "con- 
founded" subject, but we have only time to notice this: Is it con- 
ceivable that those who built this city and the tower were all there 
were on the earth ? Xotiee the chapter starts with the remark, 
"And the ichole earth was of one language and of one speech." So 
you see the whole earth is spoken of. But it was only this wicked 
people who were building a city that had their language changed. 
Besides, if all the people of the earth were so affected that one 
could by no means understand the other, as we see in the Tth verse, 
how could communication ever be re-established ? Indeed, the 
Lord must have been overreached in some way, for the people have 
ever since, contrary to the Lord's desire, found ample means of 
understanding each other, and they have gone on building towers 
and cities at a fearful rate. We observe the Bible states theories 
and never minds about the difficulties and the questions which we 
poor mortals are forced to raise and discuss. 

THE GOD OF THE JEWS. 

There is enough said and done by God, in the Old Testament, 
to admit of our forming a fair estimate of his character. And now 
-the question comes up before us in all its force, do we believe there 
ever was such a God as represented in that holy book ? Do we 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 53 

believe there ever will be ? Can we trust in such a Supreme Being, 
can we love him, can we worship him ? No. He is the God of 
the heathens, he is a heathen God, described in a book written by 
heathens and for heathens, 6,000 years ago. 

Has the God of the Old Testament a single quality of head or 
heart that would ennoble or dignify any creature ? With all due 
reverence, I declare a simple and well-known fact, when I say that, 
if we knew nothing of this being but what is said of him by 
Moses and the prophets, we would feel safe in denouncing him as a 
knave and a tyrant, a weak man with wicked desires, a doer simply 
of terrible deeds. Or is it the special prerogative of a Lord to do 
what would be a crime with his creatures ? No, we do not believe 
in such a God, we do not believe there ever was such a being. He 
has no one single quality to recommend him to our considerate re- 
gard. He has nothing in common with Christ whom he claims as 
his own begotten son. Christ we can adore, him we can trust and 
love, but not the God of the Jews. Christ is humble, Christ is 
gentle, Christ is merciful, Christ is good. He is our God, our hope 
and our salvation. 

The God of the Jews seems to be about as wicked and disrep- 
utable as his power will permit him to be. He does not keep his 
promises; he has no fixed plans, and such as he has, can easily be 
deranged. He is vain, jealous, envious, conceited, boastful. He is 
subject to the most violent fits of rage, and again to a relapse into 
the most pitiable sorrow and remorse for his wrong doings. He is 
tyrannical and vindictive, unmerciful and proud. 

What is the whole history of the Old Testament but a history 
of the Israelites ? The chosen people of God, his children ! And 
why the chosen people of God ? Because, as it appears, they were 
so much like God himself. They were not righteous, neither was 
God himself. They were vacillating, dishonest, crafty, uncharitable, 
ferocious, proud, unenviable in all things, and so was he. Then, 
why should they not be the elect of God ? 

What would stamp a father as base and dishonorable, if not 
that which God himself did in selecting a miserable people for his 
especial care and protection, fighting their battles and feeding them 
with manna, while he cast from him all the rest of the world as 
mere stubble and chaff ? Now is not this a Jew story the whole of 
it ? By the way, they are not the only people on the earth nor one 
among a few that have believed themselves the especial object of 
care to the gods. All mythology is full of just such tales as these. 

That God's word, though so freely and so frequently given was 
worth nothing, and his promises utterly unreliable, is demonstrated 



54 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

so often in the Bible that we certainly need ndt refer to texts. What 
indeed can be more ridiculous, not to say sickening, than his weak 
vacillating course with those rebellious children of his ? Over and 
over again he promised, pledged, swore, put it in writing, put it on 
stone, put up his rainbow, and then failed to perform after all! 

Anger, spasmodic and violent as it was, became chronic with 
him. His fits were frequent, and when they came on he would rave 
like a madman. He cast his people down to the lowest depths of 
misery and suffering, and "nevertheless he raised up judges" to 
deliver them, simply because it "repented the Lord of their groan- 
ings." He could not bear to hear them groan ! (Judges ii: 16.) 
Here we see he repented, as usual, but it was only for a few days. 
Soon "the anger of the Lord was hot, again, against Israel," and 
he was ready to deliver the poor miserable creatures into the hands 
of their enemies once more. At least he refused to keep the enemies 
away. As late as Hosea xiii: 11, when the Lord ought to have 
become old enough to have his temper somewhat softened, we still 
find him saying "I gave thee a king in my anger, and took him 
away in my wrath." Any one could tell what sort of a king he 
would be, selected under such circumstances. 

We could expect a Supreme Being, guided by infinite wisdom 
and sustained by a power which was also infinite, always to be found 
to be as immovable as the mountain, and as inflexible as truth itself. 
But such is not the God of the Old Testament. There is nothing 
stable known of him. Why, even the Children of Israel could and 
did thwart him in his purposes to the very last. He could not 
compel them to do anything; he could only punish them for what 
they did do. Old Satan was always a match for him in anything he 
undertook. His whole dealing with the Israelites is a simple com- 
pound of trifling and tyranny. Hezekiah, by prayer, had his life 
lengthened fifteen years, after the Lord had assured him he must 
die without either reserve or delay. No wonder Jonah was angry 
with God for the childlike part which he played. What trifling 
between God and Gideon (Judges vi: 36.)! 

His want of principle we cannot sufficiently abhor. As we 
read along and find instances rushing along in such overwhelming 
proportion, we are forced to exclaim, good heavens, do they set 
this creature up as a God for us to worship, here in the 19th 
century ? Why, Satan himself was never worse. God, according 
to his own statement, was a lying spirit in the mouth of prophets. 
— I. Kings xxii : 22. He it was that hardened Pharaoh's heart, and 
then punished him for having it hardened. He made man himself 
wicked, and then punished him for being so. How it did delight 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 55 

him to tease and tantalize good old father Abraham. He pretended 
to him, so dishonestly, that he really wished him to sacrifice his son, 
his only son Isaac. For what ? To try him. Then God is not so 
wise after all; he must experiment, like an apothecary or chemist, to 
understand us poor mortals. Paul had evidently read the Bible, and 
understood God's character well when he represents him thus (II. 
Thess. ii: 11) : "And for this cause God shall send them strong de- 
lusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned 
who believed not the truth." There was no trick that he hesitated 
to adopt to overreach either his enemies or those dear Jews of his. 
Unto Solomon "the Lord stirred up an adversary," I. Kings xi: 14. 
Those three conditions of David (II. Samuel xxiv: 13.) were terrible. 
But for what ? For numbering the people as God himself had 
moved him to do, 1st verse, 24th chapter. But the Lord soon 
repented, as we have seen him do so often — not, however, till 70,- 
000 poor devils were slain and were dead past all recovery. David 
may well ask, "these sheep what have they done ?." He it was who 
old the Israelites to borrow.jewels from the Egyptians, and after- 
wards steal them. God's vengeance was terrible; there was no 
bound to it. But is vengeance a necessary element in the character 
of a sovereign ? Does it tend to elevate him in our esteem ? Does 
it improve or reform the sufferer ? Be this as it may, Christians 
yet think vengeance par excellence belongs to God before all. Let us 
hear what the divine being says. Here is the inducement which he 
offers for obedience, Lev. xxvi:27: "And if ye will not for all this 
hearken to me, then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will 
punish you yet seven times for your sins; I will bring a sword 
upon you ; I will send pestilence among you ; ye shall eat and not 
be satisfied; ye shall eat the flesh of your sons; and the flesh of your 
daughters shall ye eat." That is inducement enough ! "I will 
destroy your high places, make your cities waste ; I will scatter you 
among the heathens ; I will not smell tfye savor of your sweet odoi's, 
my soul shall abhor you." Deuteronomy (iv: 24) may well say, "the 
Lord thy God is a jealous God, a consuming fire.' 1 '' Look* in Deut. 
vii: 10, "God repayeth them that hate him to their face, he will not 
be slack to him that hateth him; he will repay him to his face." 
And what is it to hate ' God ? Why, not to obey his weak and 
wicked mandates, or reverence him in some especial manner. Surely 
he is, as he says, a very jealous God. "But the Lord thy God," 
says Moses (Deut. vii: 23), "shall deliver them unto thee, and shall 
destroy them with a mighty destruction." Whom ? Why these 
poor aboriginees, the Canaanites, who happened to have good land 
and God's good people wanted it. That was all. The Lord God 



56 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

' 'had chosen this people to be an especial people unto himself above 
all other people upon the face of the earth." For "they were a 
holy people." So we see ! It is true they rebelled sometimes, and 
were a little idolatrous, and they made God provoked by so doing, 
but he always repented in the end, and the children were taken 
back. After all we must confess we cannot see but that he did his 
chosen people as much harm as good. He made them brilliant 
promises, but they never amounted to much. He promised them 
Canaan, but I guess they never have had much of it, and here they 
are wandering about all over the earth like so many lost sheep. 
They have the title deeds in their pockets, but they fail to get 
possession. 

His vanity was beyond all measure. Indeed, next to revenge, 
there is nothing so prominent in his heart as vanity. Does he ask, 
as we expect a good king or father to do, because it is necessary, or 
right, or proper ? These three elements never enter into the con- 
ditions of the problem. He is a tyrant, a conceited tyrant, puffed 
up with his own authority. He delights to amuse himself with his 
own whims ; and the pains and tortures which he can cause to man 
afford him inexpressible satisfaction. The most of his commands 
are the result of idle fancies and strange conceits. He says a thing 
must be done, not because it will do you or me good, but because 
"i tell you to do so" — and that is reason enough. His vanity is 
shown in nearly all of his laws. He punishes not because their 
transgression would injure him or anybody else, but because 
punishments delight him. Most of the troubles of the Israelites 
come from their not showing 'God that reverence which he 
thought was due to himself. He demands that they shall not 
worship any other gods, not take his name in vain, keep the 
Sabbath day holy, and such things. All this arises from vanity. 

We see him doing so many things that are out of all character 
for a God, or for anybody else, that we lose all respect for him. He 
took off the chariot wheels of the Egyptians (Ex. xiv : 25). He 
wrestled with Jacob a whole night, and by the by, came near getting 
the worst of it. He chased the enemies of Joshua, and as he could 
not catch them, he smote them with stones from heaven. And 
many other things he did that we do not wish to mention here. 

Finally, we find him destitute of all real power. He could 
punish, but he could not compel. He seems to have had no power 
over the wicked, not even over the poor Israelites. He is a strange 
man deified, he is the poor miserable God of idolaters, a God not 
unlike, in many respects, the worst gods of the heathen. We 
believe, everybody now believes, in a God who is a Supreme Being, 
omniscient, omnipresent, and all powerful. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 57 

God is represented in the whole of the Old Testament as a man, 
a mighty, terrible, and awful man. He was simply the hero of the 
Jews; he was their general-in-chief. There is nothing divine, or 
spiritual, or heavenly about him. Nothing is said particularly about 
where his dwelling was, but it certainly was not in heaven. Indeed 
most of his time was occupied upon the earth, in punishing the 
Israelites and their enemies. He was no such God as men believe 
in now; he was no spirit; he dwelt with men in his own bodily 
shape. He met with Moses face to face, like a friend, notwith- 
standing it is said in other places that "no man hath seen God at 
anytime," and notwithstanding, at another time, the Lord said no 
man should see his face and live. 

A man may be known by the company he keeps, and we have 
a right to judge of the Jewish God by the same rule. "We have said 
enough already of the Israelites in general. Now what kind of 
men were the patriarchs? Were they as we might expect God's 
holy representatives to be, models of purity, excellence and virtue? 
We could not, I am sorry to say, predicate any such thing of Jacob, 
David, Sampson, Solomon, and many others of God's elect. 
Even old Abraham, better than some of the rest, would not hesitate 
to lie and cheat. But how about Moses, the one who staid forty 
days with God; Moses, the Messiah of the old dispensation? Ahout 
the first thing we hear of him was his assassinating an Egyptian : 
"And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there 
was no man, he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand" (Ex. ii: 
12). His vindictiveness he inherited from God : "Have ye saved all 
the women alive — kill every male among the little ones" (Num. xxxi : 
15). " Thou shalt smite them (those heathens whose lands he was 
after), and absolutely destroy them, thou shalt make no covenant 
with them, nor show mercy unto them" (Deut. vii:2). Lord 
deliver us from such a Messiah ! And yet Moses, if we may believe 
his own story, was a very meek man. Elijah, who next to Moses 
and hardly next to him, stood nearer to God than any man that ever 
lived; who was he, what manner of man? In the I Kings, xviii: 
40, we hear him say: "Take the prophets of Baal, let not one of 
them escape, and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, 
and slew them there.'''' In II Kings, i:12: "Elijah answered and said 
unto them, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven 
and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down." 
And Elisha, who was identical with Elijah, or nearly as good as he, 
prayed unto the Lord and said: "Smite this people, I pray thee, 
with blindness" (II Kings vi:18). Of such stuff were the blessed old 
patriarchs of old! 



58 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

SATAN AND HELL. 

What were the ideas of hell and Satan only a few years ago? 
A real furnace, brimstone, &c. This is what the Testament says. 
It needs no very great penetration to perceive that God, even in the 
Old Testament, is progressive. He is not in Judges what he was in 
Genesis. It is a well established fact that the character of a people's 
God changes with its own transformations. In Genesis, God dwells 
among men ; he assumes the form of men. Over and over again 
does an angel, or a man of God, turn out to be God himself. He 
delighted to have holy converse with Moses, face to face, as a friend. 
Farther on, we see repeated cases of where "the Lord said," but 
God is more chary with his person, and he keeps himself more 
closely veiled. Even to Elijah he appears as "a still, small voice" 
(Kings xix: 1). Indeed, we are assured at the end of the five books 
that Israel never after raised up a prophet whom the Lord knew 
face to face. He now appeared more in dreams and visions, i. e. he 
became more visionary. No more wrestling, no more weak argu- 
mentative discourses, no more taking off of chariot-wheels. He 
assumes now more or less of the spiritual form. 

But we come now to the most important element in his progres- 
sive character. In the early books of the Bible, he is a union of 
two antagonistic beings into one; he is God and the Devil together. 
He is himself the lying, deceiving one, the destroying spirit, the 
consuming fire. You will observe that the Devil is not thought of, 
invented or discovered, till long after Moses' time. Such an absolute 
change had the Jewish mind undergone in time, on this subject, the 
very acts that God is assumed to have done, in one part of the Bible, 
in another part are said to be the work of Satan himself. Compare 
David's numbering in I Chron. xxi: l,and II Sam. xxiv: 1. 

Who was Satan, what was he? According to the current 
tradition of the Christian world, he is a second God, the Ahriman of 
Zoroaster, having the power to undo all that God himself can do, and 
the desire to subvert him in all his undertakings. He is emphatically 
the God of Evil, the Pluto and the Mercury of the ancients. He is 
a very terrible God, one that we must fear and respect, even if we 
do not love and reverence him. 

Cruden says that it is collected from different passages that the 
Devil was cast down from heaven, with all his company, like 
Apollo and Vulcan of old. This outbreak came from his proud 
and rebellious spirit. But this, if true, would be wonderful indeed. 
How could God, an all wise being, all seeing, have such a wicked 
rabble about him! Did he not know their character from the begin- 
ning? Were they wicked from the first, or were they not? If not 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 59 

from the first, how came they changed ? They must in the first 
place have been as imperfect and vulnerable, those holy angels, as 
we poor mortals can be; and in the second place, the influence about 
them, in heaven as they were, must have been of that wicked 
nature which produces apostacy and rebellion. These have fallen; 
will not others still fall? This subject of fallen angels is a new one 
in the Bible. All mythological history, however, is full of just 
such apostacy, and rebellion of gods against other gods. But it is 
impossible for us to conceive how such a detestable being, such an 
evil genius, could ever have found access to heaven or a seat near 
God's throne. He belongs in hell, and he belonged there from the 
beginning. He was at first either a bad spirit in a place where only 
good ones can be found, or the nature both of heaven and the Devil 
must, have undergone a total revolution. There must have been a 
time when there was either no real heaven, a Devil being in it, or a 
time when there was no true Devil, because there was no place for 
him to locate. The latter hypothesis is usually supposed to repre- 
sent the truth of the case. But we must see that this cannot be 
true, when we appreciate the fact that evil, and the power of the 
Devil, is inborn in the very nature of things. The Bible certainly 
gives account of evil enough which occurred before the appearance 
of Satan, to justify the existence of a Devil, and a very hot place to 
put him in too. 

How inconsistent are our ideas of Heaven, Hell, God and the 
Devil, and hence how false some of them must be! The Dutch 
have a Dutch heaven, and everything in it is Dutch; so with the 
French, the Yankees, the Hindoos. 

Hell is a terrible place, but whence it came or where it is located, 
is the great question. Where hell and the Devil are, there God 
certainly cannot be, certainly there he cannot be sovereign. But 
God is everywhere and supreme in all places. But notwithstanding 
this character which we connect with God, we still believe in a 
separate kingdom, in the bowels of the earth perhaps, like Pluto's, 
where the Devil reigns and God does not. This is surely heathen 
mythology come again. 

Hell is a place where a large amount of brimstone used to be 
consumed by fire. But this idea is not very popular now, as it 
is seen that it is impossible to keep up the supply of brimstone, and 
there is no good place to burn so large a quantity of sulphurous 
material. But with the brimstone vanishes also our ideas of a real 
hell. It is now simply a spiritual fire, the more so as spirits alone 
are to be burned in it, and brimstone would not meet their case. 
By and by we shall see that it was no fire at all. And then the idea 
of an eternal fire, one that does not go out, strikes us strangely. 



60 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Hell has at different times been located in the sun, in the moon, 
in comets, in the center of the earth; but as we need all these places 
for other purposes, and as they do not answer the conditions of the 
problem, we are obliged to abandon them and confess that there is 
no hell at all, or if there is, there is no place to put it. 

It will be observed that hell, like Satan, hardly belongs to the 
Old Testament; it is a creation of the New. Moses understood 
nothing about such a place. It was created with the world and the 
heavens. It will be observed too that Moses did not teach punish- 
ments after death, or even any existence after death. God then 
visited the sinner with prompt and present punishment in this world, 
and acted with no reference to another. 

If people do not mean, if the New Testament writers do not 
mean, literally, what they say of heaven and hell, how shall we 
understand when they are in earnest about what they assert, and 
when they are, as the child expresses it, oxly fooling. 

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 

I have thus passed rapidly over a few of the mam r strange 
features of the Old Testament. I have only made a mere beginning 
towards a critical examination of that work, but I have perhaps 
gone far enough to meet the purposes I have in view. I proposed 
to show that however good authority it might have been for the 
age in which it was written, it is not good authority for us of the 
present generation. It was not prepared for us. "What was good 
sense in the days of Moses, is not quite as good sense now. 

I have not wished to deny that there is in the books of the 
Old Testament much that is good sound philosophy to-day. I 
could not deny that there is much in it that is grand, beautiful, and 
even sublime. But every one knows that such matter constitutes 
not the greatest part of the whole work. If there is much to praise, 
there is more to condemn; if there is much that is good, there is 
also much that is intolerably bad. It would never answer to take 
its precepts as affording a standard by which to measure our 
morality to-day. 

I have desired to show what I hope no one will doubt, that it is 
not so much a book on religion, as the history of a nation, a 
vain, conceited and ignorant nation. We shall search in vain in 
these books for true Christian sentiments, as we have sought in vain 
among its fathers for true Christian examples. What is the moral 
influence of the Old Testament? Is it not in strict antagonism with 
what Christ taught and practiced? Did not Christ, in the plainest 
terms, abrogate some portions of it at least? Does he teach the 
doctrine of an eye for an eye, the doctrine of revenge, the doctrine 



THE OLD TESTAMENT. 61 

of a relentless and unforgiving heart? Would he subscribe to the 
immoralities and the base conduct of the patriarchs? 

But taken as a whole, we must add that no Christian believes 
the Old Testament ; no one accepts and yields to its authority. A 
few things we observe because only, however, that it is agreeable to 
our tastes, and not because it is the word of God himself. But how 
much more is there that we reject as useless and contemptible ! God 
places great stress upon sacrifices. Like the deities of the Heathen, 
nothing pleases him so well as a good fat sheep, or a nice young 
bullock. The smoke of the altar and its savor %was grateful unto 
him. He says distinctly, ' ' thou shalt make an altar to burn incense 
on," but we do not make any such thing. And then, too, he had 
some strange fancies about circumcision. He considered that a 
matter of first rate importance. (Joshua understood the Lord's 
wishes so well that he had the children of Israel circumcised twice. ) 
He orders us to be circumcised without delay, and yet we refuse. Is 
this obeying the Lord and keeping his commandments holy? We 
are told not to eat pork, and not to build fires on Sunday, and yet 
we pass all these mandates by unnoticed. And we are told to make 
an ark of shittim-wood, and this is left undone also. Indeed, what 
regard do we pay to all the precepts and laws of the xx, xxi, xxii, 
xxiii and xxv chapters of Exodus, to say nothing of many other 
places? Oh, but these things were meant only for the Jews! Tell 
us then, I pray thee, ichat was not meant for the Jews only f 

No one believes the miracles of the Old Testament. No one 
believes that the sun stood still for Joshua, or that it returned ten 
degrees for Hezekiah. No one believes that any people ever lived 
forty years on manna sent from heaven by the Lord. No one 
believes that God wrestled with Jacob all night. No one believes 
that Moses dwelt with the Lord forty days and forty nights, without 
eating and drinking, or that he ever saw him face to face. No one 
believes that Sampson lost his strength by losing his hair, or that 
Jonah lived in the belly of a fish three days, being vomited on the 
land when the Lord spake to it. 

The Bible was written in an age when people believed 
in signs and wonders, in witches and wizards, sea-serpents 
and dragons. Why should we of another era be forced to believe 
in them too? The Old Testament was written in an age when it 
was believed that the Lord was God only of the Jews, and it has 
now come down to us who believe and know that he is the God of 

ALL MANKIND. 

I have aimed my attack chiefly upon the historical part of the 
Old Testament, or rather upon the theoretical and traditional part 



62 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

of it. It is only a portion of its moral teachings that I cannot 
endorse. There are besides these, many doctrines that are sound, 
even sublime. I have great respect for the Old Testament, as the 
holy record of an important people; but I could hardly be induced 
to live by it now. So I respect, even venerate, the mythological 
traditions of the ancients, but could hardly be induced to accept 
them as containing sound and good doctrines for the people of 
to-day. 

The Old Testament shall never be without my tender regard; I 
always venerate age. But it is now too old and decrepit for me to 
think for one moment that it will be able to lead us safely through 
the struggles and trials of this life. It must go the way of all that 
is aged, to the grave, leaving its place to be supplied by that which 
is younger and stronger, that which is even with the times. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CHANGE. 

After laboring so long in the darkness and desolation of the 
Old Testament, shuddering the while under the mutterings of its 
vengeful ire, it is a relief to us poor mortals to emerge at last into 
the full and glorious light of the New. We do not, it is true, leave 
entirely the region of miracles, of wonderful and impossible things, 
but they are not so monstrous as before. God appears no more in 
his proper person, in his own form, or rather in his absence of 
form. He does not even appear as a pillar of cloud, or as a shining 
light, or burning bush. We do not hear him in the clouds. He 
walks no more the earth, like Hercules, no more does he fight the 
battles of the Israelites, no more does he cause the stones to rain 
down upon his enemies and thus overwhelm them in his wrath. 
He vows no more, neither does he curse, nor swear, nor repent. 
Rarely does he appear in visions, rarely is he represented by angels; 
still more rarely does he take it upon himself, as of old, to render 
barren women fruitful. 

It is another God entirely that we meet with here. He is quite 
a new being. Still, however, he is the especial God of the Jews. 
He sent his only son into the world to be their particular Savior 
and King. For them this son lost his life, for them he suffered 
unspeakable woes. It is not till we reach Paul that Gentiles begin 
to be taken into the fold to share in God's blessings. Nevertheless 
God is more of a spirit and less of a man. He is now located in 
heaven, and there is his throne and his kingdom. He resides no 
more, as in days of old, with the stiff-necked and idolatrous Jews. 
He has a care now for lilies and sparrows, and moreover, somewhat 
for the Gentiles. 

In the Old Testament we have nothing but the struggles of a 
people against monotheism, the unceasing effort to unite the belief 



64 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

in a single God with the worshiping of idols. Everything there 
partakes of polytheism, nay, of heathenism. Even with the 
prophets the belief in a Supreme Being was a mere word of mouth 
matter. Instead of being a sovereign and a god, he was merely 
an apology for one. He was simply a hero, and a very poor hero at 
that. The most conspicuous weaknesses in his character were his 
shortsightedness and want of decision. To these we may add his 
terrible vengeance and the tardiness with which his promises were 
performed. In a word, we find him the prototype of all heathen 
gods. He must have just so much honor, so much reverence, so 
much humility. He must cause just so much suffering and pain, 
just so much anguish, or his wrath would grow hot and he himself 
run mad. He must have, like other gods, just so much blood 
spilled, just so much wood must be burnt, he must smell just so 
much savor and this savor must be just so sweet. To disregard 
these whims and fancies of God, would be likely to incur his most 
wrathful displeasure, and war, pestilence and famine would soon be 
the inevitable result. 

In the New Testament, the character of God is somewhat toned 
down. He is not the barbarous and unmerciful master that we find 
him in the Old. Nevertheless, we find him occasionally revengeful, 
jealous, unjust — if indeed, we may believe his biographers, for of 
himself he says nothing, does nothing, is nothing. We only know 
him through his prophets, and how well they understood him we 
dare not affirm. In the account that is given of him and his 
doings it is impossible to separate that which is from God from that 
which is from man. But we observe this particularly in the New 
Testament, that the struggle against idolatry and polytheism has 
substantially ended. 

There is this important point of difference also between the two 
divisions of the Bible. Up to this time all punishments were visited 
promptly upon the sinner in the present world, without any thought 
or reference to the world to come. The doctrine of the immortality 
of the soul &nd that of future rewards and punishments, has no 
existence, certainly no prominence, in the Old Testament. Under 
the new dispensation the wicked thrive as well as the good. Their 
fields are watered, their trees are fruitful, and their flocks multiply. 
But eternal vengeance aicaits the unbeliever in the world to come. Here 
Satan for the first time, that evil genius, with his legions, begins to 
play a part on his own responsibility. In the Old Testament, Satan 
is scarcely mentioned; his influence is not recognized. God there is 
himself the evil genius, the origin of wickedness and the cause of 
suffering- In the New Testament Satan has a kingdom of his own. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 65 

Into his hands unbelievers are cast for eternal punishment. He 
delights in the miseries of the wretched. God in the New, though 
not yet entirely the good spirit, being yet represented as doing many 
things that a good spirit would never do, still does not, as before, 
stand out pre-eminently as the bad one. The good ( and bad elements 
of his character, once united in one individual, are now represented 
by two characters. So heaven and hell, which before were combined 
and undistinguishable, without either an existence or a name, have 
each in the New Testament their own appropriate location and 
office. 

CHRIST. 

Let us now seek to understand the true character of Christ, and 
in order to do this it will be necessary first to consider his origin. 

The conception of Christ as it is commonly received by the 
Christian world, is in the highest degree miraculous. It is not 
simply anomalous, it is more than that, it is impossible, monstrous. 
It is not simply changing water into wine, or healing the sick, or 
even raising the dead. It is something besides this ; it is far more 
wonderful. Mary, the mother of Jesus, according to Matthew, 
"was found with child of the Holy Ghost." And Luke in still 
more elaborate terms, remarks that "The Holy Ghost shall come 
upon thee and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee, 
therefore that thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the 
Son of God." God is a spirit, formless, limitless, infinite, and 
Mary an ordinary human being, a woman. How could such a 
spirit be concerned directly in the conception of any mortal? We 
hesitate not, if we are to take it in its literal sense, as Christians 
affect to do, to pronounce this the most shocking and absurd story 
in the whole Bible, and we are glad that the New Testament has no 
more such. It is evidently a stray chapter from the Old Testament ; 
the God here thought of is merely the God of Moses, whom you 
will remember we found to be only an extraordinary, unapproach- 
able and an unimaginable man. 

We must be permitted to dwell at some length on this subject ; 
it is the turning point of our whole religious system. If Christ 
was not born thus directly from God, he was not the Son of God in 
its literal sense, and it must turn out that our religion is, like that of 
every other people, merely the work of man. It must also follow 
that we are not to be distinguished from all other people by having 
the Son of God born from among us and for us alone, while other 
people are left to die without a Savior. 

This being an extraordinary, and to us an impossible circum- 
stance, we have a right to demand more than ordinary evidence to 

5 



66 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

substantiate this strange assumption. Now let us see what evidence 
has come down to this generation. We must first observe that 
neither Matthew nor Luke pretended, even in this very important 
matter, to give the source of this astonishing information. Matthew 
begins his story with the plain remark that ' ' the birth of Christ was 
in this wise." Luke begins his gospel with the remark that he sets 
forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely 
believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us which from 
the beginning were eye-witnesses, and ministers of the word." But 
who was the "eye-witness" of this affair of Mary, or who heard 
and reported faithfully the address of the angels to Mary, according 
to Luke, and to Joseph, according to Matthew? Both of these 
writers speak of the whole matter as if it were ordinary and common- 
place. They evidently speak what is "surely believed among us;" 
their authority, however, is only tradition and common report. No 
one would think that such a story should be founded on the mere 
statement of Mary, who was so vitally interested in the matter. 

We have a right to ask that there be no great discrepancies in 
this account as given by the two writers. We have a right to ask 
that the whole story shall be told in a direct and plain manner, and 
that it may stand the closest criticism in all its bearings and rela- 
tions. But do we have this satisfaction here? We have not the 
time to pass over the discrepancies and the defects of each of these 
narratives. Suffice it to say there are many of them, but we will 
only notice a few. We have already noticed, in passing, that 
according to one, the angel, or Gabriel, as Luke has it, discoursed 
with Mary, and according to the other, with Joseph. We add now 
that in Matthew the messenger appeared in a dream; in Luke it 
reads: "he came in unto her and said." The time of appearance 
is also different. Look, too, at the point in the address ; in Matthew, 
it is to prevent Joseph from turning Mary away for an offence now 
apparent enough; in Luke, it is that Mary may "Fear not." The 
Protevangelion, apochryphal, gives still another version. When 
questioned by Joseph (who had been absent) about this strange 
matter, Mary became confused and answered that she "did not 
know whence this is." She had forgotten the words of the angel. 

To add no more, there are here three different accounts of the 
conception of Jesus, and in many of the essential particulars they 
do not agree. Shall we believe any of them? Or which shall we 
believe? Two of them at least must be false. We repeat again, 
have we not a right to ask for a plain, unvarying statement in such 
a peculiar and unnatural case as this ? 

For us the story is a monstrous one; we believe in a God who is 
a spirit, who resides everywhere in general, but never is anywhere 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 67 

in particular; one who cannot and who does not come down from 
heaven, even on such occasions as this. But for the Jews of the Old 
Testament, and for the Greeks, and the Romans, and the heathens, 
who believe in wooden gods, this was a most natural and sensible 
thing. Christ was not the first nor by any means the only one born 
of a God. Just in the same manner, a Roman virgin in olden time 
became pregnant, or at least thought she did, by Mars ; and so Rom- 
ulus was born. Alexander the Great was divinely conceived. 
iEneas had Venus for his mother, and Plato was begat by Apollo. 
Nothing was more certain than that men such as Alexander and 
Plato, who exhibited divine qualities, should be able to trace their 
origin to the deity. That this same tendency to make gods of god- 
like men prevailed with the Jews, will be found evident to any one 
who reads the Old Testament. It was a most common thing for 
God to be interested in the birth of their great men. Samuel was 
brought forth by a barren woman, and was so named because "she 
had asked him of the Lord." We are told in Genesis that "the 
Lord visited Sarah (who was barren of course), as he had said, and 
the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken. For Sarah conceived 
and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which 
God had spoken to him." So in Judges, "the angel of the Lord 
appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now thou art 
barren, and bearest not; but thou shalt conceive and bare a son" 
(Samson). Now if to this we add the account of the miraculous 
conception of John the Baptist also, it must be confessed we have 
given sufficient instances of accounts which run parallel with this. 
Nothing could be more natural and pleasing to Jesus than such a 
story. 

It is an important fact too, in this connection, that nowhere else 
in the New Testament, not even in Mark or John, do we find any 
reference to this assumed miraculous conception. 

Besides this negative evidence in opposition to the claim that 
Christ was born of the Holy Ghost, we must add some which is 
more positive. It is admitted on all hands, and it is easily enough 
shown if not admitted, that Christ grew up in the family of Joseph 
as one of his children, and that he was considered by all his con- 
temporaries as simply and plainly "the carpenter's son." Joseph is 
perhaps as frequently referred to as his father, as Mary is as his 
mother. And be it observed Christ never undertakes to prove 
that he is the Son of God by virtue of his conception. He never 
says a word about it, while that alone, if demonstrated, would have 
settled the whole question. He proves his claim by his miraculous 
power and his resurrection. His disciples seem to know nothing of 



68 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

his descent. He is called the Son of God occasionally, but that 
proves nothing, as it is a term nsed in applications other than its 
literal one. He is also frequently called the Son of Man, and the 
Son of David. Indeed, that longest of genealogies in Matthew 
and Luke would have been false and also worthless, if not to prove 
that Christ was of the line of David, through Joseph his father. 
Perhaps also we may show hereafter that it was some time in 
Christ's later years before even he began to think he was really the 
Son of God. 

Again, we must consider that though there is an attempt to 
make out that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born and never 
was anything else, the evidence that Mary was but an ordinary 
woman is proved beyond controversy by the fact that Jesus had 
brethren and sisters, i. e., that his mother had children besides 
Jesus, younger than he, and possibly some older. "We are taught 
to consider Mary an ordinary woman, but the Catholics very prop- 
erly treat her as divine, as the mother of God. 

So we conclude that the story of Christ's anomalous birth was 
one which grew up after his death, to make it compare with his 
life and death. 

We are repeatedly and triumphantly, as it were, assured that 
Christ was the Son of David, and that long genealogy is to demon- 
strate the fact. But wherein lies the particular glory, if it were 
true? Who was David, that we should expect a Savior from his 
house? History, even the Bible, tells us that he was a blood-thirsty 
warrior, a rakish, abandoned sort of fellow, like Solomon. It is no 
wonder that the Ebionites held him in absolute abhorrence. And who 
was Mary, that we should expect the King of Glory to be born of 
her? We hear nothing astonishing of her, either before his birth 
or after it. 

The special interposition of God was invoked that Christ might 
be born without sin. Yet he was born of a sinful mother and in a 
sinful way. If he did not inherit all the penalties of Adam's 
transgression, who then ever did? He suffered pain, experienced 
hunger, and in the end died as a friendless and forsaken mortal dies, 
in poverty and distress. 

HIS BIRTH. 

Christ was born like a God. It is no wonder then that his 
birth was something more than an ordinary occurrence. However, 
we must feel some surprise that a mother, a virgin, who was 
pregnant of the Holy Ghost, should be delivered in the ordinary 
way. Christ, for all we are informed, came into the world not only 
born of humble parents, but born in the most common way. We 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 69 

hear of nothing strange or unusual that occurred at his "birth. 
Indeed, is it not inexplicable that one who was conceived in that 
miraculous, god-like manner, should from that moment forward 
have had, even to the day of his death, the simple career of the 
most ordinary mortal? Or, again, is it not strange that one who 
during every moment of his wordly history we know only as a 
mortal being, eating, drinking and djdng as a mortal being, should 
still have had God for his natural father? 

It was only after Christ was born, how long we know not, that 
the miracles begin to develop, and the external world begins to be 
disturbed. Let us see what happened. Matthew says, wise men 
came from the east and inquired, ''where is he that is born king of 
the Jews?" And why ask this ? On what evidence did they come? 
Simply this: they had seen a star in the east. A star! What star? 
His star? An extra planet, shall we say, or a meteor? They 
seem to have known all about this star, its history and what 
it meant. They were expecting it, and it had now come. But the 
sequel proved they were mistaken in all their wisdom, for Christ was 
not then, and never did become, at any time, King of the Jews. 

Besides, they were strangers from the East. Why so interested 
in a Jewish King? 

There is a mystery about all this that no one can unravel. 
These wise men, why should they come to Jerusalem? Did they 
expect to find wiser men than themselves? We are not so informed. 
They evidently went to Jerusalem because in the popular mind it 
was a necessary link in the chain. The star, in the end, nothing 
else, the same star they had seen in the east, pointed out the very 
thing they came to inquire about, viz. : where the young child was. 
Again we ask, why must they first go to Jerusalem? 

The chief priests and scribes were all expecting the Messiah. 
Even if they had not seen the star, they knew where he ' ' should 
be born." They knew the prophecies. But mark this particularly: 
it was a Governor that they expected, it was no Savior. It was for 
this reason that Herod trembled for his head. So ran the prophecy. 

This is Matthew's version. But Luke has his account a little 
different. Indeed, it is another story entirely, and if one is right, 
the other must be wrong. Luke says it was an angel, and not a 
star, as Matthew says, that directed the way to the new-born child; 
and those directed were poor shepherds who knew nothing of the 
coming Messiah, and not wise men who had been expecting him all 
t he while. The matter was all new to the shepherds, as you may 
see by the particular and full manner in which the angel unfolds 



70 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

the mystery. There was not only an angel, but " suddenly there 
was with him a multitude of the heavenly host praising God," &c. 
Matthew had not heard this, and hence makes no mention of it. 

Observe, too, that Luke has nothing to say about Herod and his 
wicked deed in killing so many innocent little hoys. It is too 
important for Luke to omit, if he knew the fact, as a divine 
writer would. Besides, Matthew's story is very improbable, it 
hardly hangs together. Thus Jesus was an infant just born — no- 
where near two years of age. Why then destroy all under two 
years of age ? Why have recourse to so terrible a remedy, when an 
easier one was at his command? He seems not to have made the 
slightest attempt to find the child, farther than entrusting this all- 
important mission to strangers who he might have known would 
betray him, just as they did. It is a feeble story. It is merely a 
revised edition of some of the Old Testament accounts; for example, 
Pharaoh, and Moses, and Nimrod, and Abraham. It was in 
harmony with the common idea of ancient times, that promising 
men should find many obstacles, that enemies should seek to destroy 
them in their infancy, but that after all they should be saved by 
some miracle. So we have the story of Cyrus, and of Augustus; 
also of Romulus. In the case of Augustus it was announced by a 
prodigy that one destined to be a king of the Romans is born. So 
the Senate, frightened like Herod, decreed that no children born in 
that year should be reared up or educated. In those days, as well 
as long before and long after, it was not only believed that great 
men had their stars, but also that stars gave warning or premonition 
of things soon to happen. We often read of such stars in the Bible. 
Hence we see a star here in Matthew just as we see an angel in 
Luke, the usual medium through which unusual information was 
communicated. 

In concluding this part of Christ's history, how shall we recon- 
cile the smooth and easy boyhood of Christ in Luke, with the 
stormy time he has in Matthew? 

HIS NATIVITY. 

It is not a well settled point where Christ was born. He was 
always known and spoken of as Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew 
evidently intends to convey the idea, though he does not precisely 
say so, that Christ was born at Bethlehem. But even this author 
brings Joseph in the end back to Nazareth, and there at least, Jesus 
was brought up. According to Luke, the family lived at Nazareth 
at the time, and the birth of Christ at Bethlehem is a pure accident, 
and besides an accident that we can hardly account for. He is 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 71 

nowhere else in the Testament spoken of as being from Bethlehem, 
but always from Galilee or Nazareth. We can see no adequate 
reason why Joseph and his wife, in her condition, should go up to 
Bethlehem to be taxed. 

It is evident that this happened, as so many other things 
happened, "that the prophecy might be fulfilled." You will 
observe that Christ and his followers found this claim first of all 
upon prophecy, that Christ was foretold again and again, in differ- 
ent parts of the Bible, and in the most particular manner. There 
is then a strong motive in the historian to make the story correspond 
with the prediction. There is an evident effort in that direction 
here, as in so many other places. But it is incontrovertible that 
Jesus was a Nazarene and did not come out of Bethlehem, and so 
did not fulfill the conditions of the prophecy. 

HIS YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 

If we follow our accepted Gospels and them alone, we shall find 
that, with very few exceptions, Christ's boyhood was not marked 
by anything peculiar. He grew up it seems as other boys, with but 
very few things, to say the most, to distinguish him from those of 
his age. Indeed, you will mark that in his whole early life, even 
to manhood, he was characterised by nothing that marked him a 
God. 

Matthew has not a word to say on his early history; the first we 
hear of him is his coming to John for baptism. We are hence left 
to infer that up to the time of his manhood and the beginning of 
his ministry, nothing had occurred worthy of mention. But Luke 
as usual is more elaborate; he has had better sources of information, 
or has inserted what Matthew did not consider authentic. A strik- 
ing incident occurred, while he was still an infant, at the time of 
his presentation in the temple. Simeon was an old man, "waiting 
for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Ghost was upon him," 
and it was revealed to him that he should not see death before he 
had seen the Lord's Christ, "and he came by the spirit into the 
temple," at the time Christ was brought there to be done for "after 
the custom of the law." As soon as he saw the child he recognized 
him as "the light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy 
people, Israel." And in continuance of the wonder, a certain 
Anna, too," a widow of about four score and four years," "came in 
at that instant," and gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, "and 
spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." 
These were miracles, and strange ones they were too. And for 
what purpose? Only to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, and to 
substantiate his claim. But there are some things which do not 



72 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

match with some other things which we know. Simeon said Jesus 
was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles. This must have been 
shocking to the Jews of that day, for according to the prophecy, on 
which Christ also lays his foundation, he was to be their king, and 
not the Savior of mankind. "And Joseph and his mother mar- 
veled at these things which were spoken of him." This part of 
the story plainly supposes that nothing had been said or heard of 
in reference to Christ's new kind of conception. Joseph and Mary 
marveled! Why? Because they did not dream that a child whom 
they had taken for an ordinary one, should be such an one as 
Simeon had described. Simeon had given evidently the first inti- 
mation of his true or prospective character. 

It is natural that a person who became so distinguished a 
person as Christ should have marvelous things told of his childhood 
days, and that we do not find them, as we should expect, in the gospel 
life of Christ, is because they have been suppressed. They had 
become so magnified and so discredited, that even the Christian 
world refused to receive them. The character of some of these 
stories has been indicated under the heading of "False Gospels." 
"But we must add that there is no more reason in retaining those 
accounts which we have than there would be in retaining those that 
are told in the Gospels which are Apochryphal. 

Jesus, according to Luke, increased in wisdom and stature (like 
any youth), and in favor with God and men. When he was twelve 
years old, a curious incident occurred. His parents had gone to 
Jerusalem to the feast, as they did every year, taking their child 
with them. He was a child of great promise, and one would think 
they would have watched over him with the utmost care, and yet 
they allowed him to run at large, and never troubled themselves to 
look for him till he had been gone a whole day. Of course, they 
had some trouble in finding him. And when they found him 
"sitting in the midst of the doctors," and inquired why he had 
dealt with them so, he answered thus: "How is it that ye sought 
me; wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?" Of 
course they understood not his saying, because they had entirely 
forgotten what Simeon and Anna had said a few years before, and 
this was a sudden, strange and unexpected turn in his conduct. 
But he seems to have neglected his father's business unaccountably 
after that, for we hear of nothing of the kind of him again for 
eighteen whole years. 

Finally, we ask what did Christ do up to the time of his ministry 
that might not have been done by any ordinary man? What 
evidence did he give, up to the time he was thirty years old, that 
he was a god born of a God? 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 73 

HIS CHARACTER. 

We have now examined the subject of the conception of 
Christ by or through the Holy Ghost, and we find the story neither 
plausible, probable nor possible. There is, it must be confessed, 
no reliable evidence to show that Christ was born a God. From 
infancy up to the age of maturity, or more precisely up to the age 
of thirty years, (when he is suppos ed to begin his ministry), we 
know nothing of him to prove that he was anything more than a 
mortal man. 

All the real history of Christ and his acts is confined to the 
period of time which began with his ministry and ended with his 
death. We must examine that history in order to ascertain his true 
character and see how or where he has established his claims to 
being the Son of God and the promised Messiah. 

It should first of all be noticed that Christ did not all at once 
break forth as the King of Glory and the Son of God. He had a 
history like any other prophet. It required time and proof to 
demonstrate that he was anything else than Joseph the carpenter's 
son, and in the end only a small few believed it. He developed 
himself gradually. It took a long time before even Christ himself 
began to think that he was, as some called him, really the Son of 
God. 

Before referring to the particular accounts of Christ's Messiah- 
ship as given in the four gospels, it may be proper to get a clear 
idea of who and what a Messiah was to be. It is a well understood 
fact that the Jews, for many years before the appearance of Christ, 
had been expecting a Messiah, and that that expectation was at its 
height when Christ was born; but, be it ever borne in mind, they 
did not expect any such Messiah as Christ proved to be in the end, 
and that is the reason why the Jews rejected him almost to a man. 
The Jews were oppressed; they expected God would send some one 
to deliver and save them, as he had so often done before. They 
expected one who would save not the whole world, but the Jews 
alone. They expected that some one would be sent from God, but 
this did not imply the necessity that the one sent should be literally 
and especially the Son of God, any more than in the case of the 
many Saviors or deliverers that had been sent to Israel in the day3 
of the Old Testament, such as Moses, David and Joshua. The 
term Son of God in the New Testament is not new. It is used 
many times in the Old, in reference to kings and others of Israel. 
We are all sons of God, and especially were they such whom God 
took under his especial care, and whom he made his especial minis- 



74 THE XEW TESTAMENT. 

ters and servants. God can mean no more nor less than that when 
he is assumed to have said of David's seed: "I will be his father 
and he shall be my son.'' 

A careful examination of the prophecies must lead to the 
conclusion that no such personage as Christ proved to be was ever 
foretold by any prophet or in any writing of the Old Testament. 
Isaiah is most relied on,- and let us hear what he says. Isaiah was 
himself a preacher as well as a prophet. He joined in the common 
lamentation of all good men, from Moses down, for the wickedness 
and idolatry of the Jews. He entreats them to repent; he makes 
them bright promises to encourage and cheer them in their suffer- 
ings. "O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of 
the Lord." (ii: 5). "Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen." 
(iii: 8). He foretells the extremity of their evils, (iii) but a few 
shall be left, and they shall be holy. " Therefore the Lord himself 
shall give thee a sign : Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a 
son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he 
eat. that he may know how to refuse the evil, and choose the good." 
(vii: 14-15). If this did refer to Christ, it is no proof that he was 
the Son of God. "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
given; and the government shall be upon his shoulders; and his 
name shall be called wonderful, counsellor, The Mighty God, The 
Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his 
government and peace there shall be no end." (ix: 6-7). This 
evidently indicates a natural son who is to become a king, not a 
Savior. The terms used are mere epithets, more proper for God 
himself than for his son. "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; 
mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon 
him." (xlii: 1). He was evidently to be one whom God had 
elected, not procreated. 

The prophecy of Micah evidently looks forward to a ruler of 
Israel, not to a Messiah. '"And this man shall be the peace, when 
the Assyrian shall come into our land; thus shall he deliver us from 
the Assyrian," &c. (Micah v :5-6). 'He was sent to the lost sheep 
of the house of Israel. (Matthew xv: 24). 

The conclusion that we come to is one which is irresistible : 
that no such Savior as Christ became was ever prophesied, and we 
are thus able to account for the Jews rejecting him. He did not 
correspond with the image they had formed of him. They expected 
one like David, a deliverer, and hence from David. Again, 
prophecies were in those days very uncertain, and very undefinable 
things. People were given to prophecy then as now. Prophecy 
always has been natural to man, and what is foretold sometimes 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. ^ 

comes to pass and sometimes does not. Allowed to give your own 
construction, you can find almost anything foretold in the Bible. 
Now then, such men as Isaiah and Micah had in view have never 
yet made their appearance. And the followers of Christ cannot 
prove that he corresponds to the deliverers referred to in those 
books, any more than they could prove it was John the Baptist, or 
Mahomet, or Paul, or the many false Christs that arose after Jesus. 
Jesus assumed to be the one foretold, but he never gave the first 
item of evidence to prove that claim. 

We are now prepared to follow out the different accounts of 
Christ's development as the Messiah. In Matthew the first intima- 
tion which we have, after the account of the conception, that 
Christ is the Son of God, is at the time of Christ's baptism, when 
a voice from heaven said: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I 
am well pleased." He was then thirty years old. This would 
seem to settle the whole question, and we should expect that Christ 
and his followers, if not the world besides, would continually 
adhere to that character now so well established. But we will see 
that that evidence must have all passed away like a fleeting and 
deceitful dream. The devil had evidently heard of this, and hence 
he prefaces his remarks with, if thou be the 8071 of God. Nothing 
more is said about Christ's being the Son of God for a long distance; 
he is a mere preacher, like Jonah and many prophets of old, calling 
the erring children of Israel to repentance, and saying, the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand. In the 27th verse of the eighth chapter, the 
Devil calls him " Son of God," but not much attention seems to be 
paid to it. In the 27th verse of the ninth chapter, he is called" Son 
of David," and no objection seems to be made by anybody. In the 
27th verse of the eleventh chapter, he first uses the term " Son " 
specially in reference to God his father. But all the people were 
amazed, in the 23d verse of the eleventh chapter, and said: "Is not 
this the Son of David?" He had, it seems, so far been only known 
as Joseph's son. Even so late in his ministry as the sixteenth chapter, 
his character is not yet understood. He is obliged to ask his disci- 
ples, " Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" In the 
20th verse of the same chapter, he seems to assume plainly that he 
is Jesus the Christ, but he charges all to keep the fact suppressed. 

In this gospel we see that Christ is generally called the Son of 
Man, and sometimes the Son of David, sometimes the prophet of 
Nazereth, and very rarely, Son of God. 

The term Son of Man is common in the Old Testament, and 
seems to have no special significance as applied to Christ, or if it 
has, that significance has not yet been determined. We see that 



76 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

little stress is laid upon the fact that he was born of God. His 
main aim and concern is to prove that he was the Messiah who had 
been foretold, and whom the Jews were expecting. Such a Messiah, 
as we have indicated before, was not to have a monstrous or anom- 
alous conception, and was not to be in any new sense the Son of 
God. 

Mark passes over the childhood of Christ; but he starts in the 
beginning with the assumption that Christ is the Son of God. He 
gives him about the same character that Matthew does. In the 35th 
verse of the twelfth chapter, however, we are surprised to find Christ 
trying to prove himself the Son of God, and denying that he is the 
Son of David, as he was commonly understood to be. 

In Luke we find the same want of fixedness that we have found 
in the others. He is assumed to be the Son of God in one place, 
and again, the gravest doubts are thrown upon this character by 
what is said in another place. In John there is more of fixedness. 
John evidently wrote later, and in his day Christ was accepted by 
his followers as the Son of God. 

"We thus see that Christ did, some time after his baptism, when 
he had become a man, occasionally assume to be the Son of God. 
But as to the sense in which he used that term we are left still in 
the dark. Certain it is, neither he nor his advocates ever referred 
to his conception. It is eminently probable that he never had any 
idea that God was his father, except in the spiritual sense. That 
identical question never seems to have amounted to much in his 
time. The whole question was whether he was the Messiah, the 
one who had been prophesied before. Even as such he was doubted 
by his own disciples to the very last; that is to say, their minds 
seemed not to be easy on that point. The term Son of God, for 
people such as followed him in his day, and for one who lived and 
died as he did, was, in its spiritual sense, one of the most natural 
ones in the world. 

Again, if Christ was truly a God, and not a man divine, he 
should hardly date his existence from the time of his birth or con- 
ception. If he merely came down temporarily, to assume mortal 
shape, we feel that he ought to have indicated some consciousness 
on his part of his pre-existence in some other form. But we have 
nothing from him to indicate that he knew anything more of his 
previous history than could an ordinary mortal under the same 
circumstances. John, indeed, refers to such a pre-existence, but it 
is in the vaguest terms. Even John can give us no assurance 
that Christ was conscious of his having existed, before his birth, in 
heaven. Besides, John is a later writer, just as this idea of pre- 
txistence is a later conception. 



THE NEW TESTAMEN1. 77 

Among other inferences which we form from a careful com- 
parison of the words of the Four Gospels, is this one, that Christ 
was a gradual and slow growth to himself. Nothing can be more 
undoubted than that he did not start out with a clear and fixed idea 
of what he was and what he was to perform. He was developed 
and directed by circumstances. The ecstacies of his followers in 
the end transported him. He enlarged his own dimensions to keep 
pace with the extravagant conceptions which the people had of him. 
He came to believe in the end that he was something more than a 
preacher, that he was a prophet, nay, more than a prophet. 

We think we are now prepared to form a fair estimate of the 
character of Christ. He was not the son of God in the sense 
commonly understood. No matter how many wonders he may have 
performed, he was himself no miracle at all. He was born naturally, 
lived naturally, and died as other men die. He was a minister, 
devoted to the salvation first of his own people, and next to that of 
the Gentile world. He was emphatically the great teacher, and as 
such the world must recognize and receive him. 

THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST. 

But he was something more than a teacher; he was besides an 
extraordinary personage. He had a knowledge of the human heart, 
and a power over it such as perhaps no one ever had before him nor 
since. He had, it is evident in a strange degree, that magnetic 
power which has characterized other great men. It is upon this 
principle that we must explain his miracles, for that he had a 
miraculous power, miraculous at least for the age in which he lived, 
is too well attested to admit of our doubting in full. He evidently 
did many things which other men could not do. But there can be 
no doubt that the popular imagination of his time and the 
uncertainty of manuscripts and the transcripts from them have 
contributed much towards giving them a coloring which they never 
had at the time of their inception. 

We must bear in mind, too, that Christ lived in an age when 
everything unusual or inexplicable to the people was certain to be 
considered a miracle, an age when deviltry, witchcraft, soothsayings, 
clairvoyance and mesmerism perhaps were prevalent and popular. 
It is evident that Christ possessed some such power as this under 
consideration. In his time the secrets of nature were but little 
understood; medicine, too, as an art, was still unborn. People were 
then healed not by pills and pectorals, but by the touch of some holy 
person, or of some sacred relic or tomb, by faith, vows, sacrifices 
and charms. It is no wonder that sorcery and incantation occupied 
so high and firm a position in those days. We hardly appreciate 



78 TEE NEW TESTAMENT. 

the difference between his age and ours in this respect. With 
our beliefs and our doubts on these arts of divination, of witchery 
and legerdemain, we would have been considered in those days, all 
of us, the greatest heretics, the veriest infidels, in the world. 

Christ was by no means the only one presumed to have this 
magic power of healing. The touch* of kings was believed to have 
this mysterious influence over disease. Long after Christ the 
Christian world, particularly the Catholics, believed largely in this 
wonderful influence which holy persons especially had over others. 
It will be noticed that a large portion of Christ's care was bestowed 
upon those who were possessed with devils. These were no doubt 
persons who in a later age would have been considered bewitched 
or maniacs, and the spell that bound them could only be removed 
by certain kinds of charms and kindred performances. 

But the age of miracles has not yet passed, and probably never 
will pass away entirely. Look at the well attested miracles on the 
tomb of Abbe de Paris of a late day. These miracles were tested in 
every possible way, and never were disproved by anybody. It is 
only a short time since the papers gave an account of a nun near 
Quebec who, just ready to die of consumption, was cured in one 
short night. And how? Why, she and the other nuns prayed for 
a cure on the next New Year's day, addressing themselves to the 
Immaculate Mary, and keeping a certain number of lamps burning. 
Any day and anywhere we can hear of instances of persons cured 
most miraculously, or of persons whose lives have been saved in 
some providential manner. You will remember that most of 
Christ's miracles were performed by him in the art of healing and 
bringing the dead to life, just the very department where we have 
miracles to-day. 

And have we not also spiritualism, magnetism, psychology and 
feats of legerdemain which are miracles to us? We are apt to call 
everything a miracle the cause or reason of which we are not apt to 
comprehend. Do we not hear, too, of miracles of conversion, and 
the wonderful effects of prayer? All Christians still believe in 
miracles,. though they may not know them by that name. 

Scarcely a thing is there which Christ is reported to have done 
for a miracle which has not been done many times since his day. 
The blind have received their sight after losing it for many years, 
those who were bewitched have had the spell broken, maniacs 
have been restored to soundness, even the dead, or those believed 
to be dead, have been brought back to life again. 

We regret to see a tendency on the part of all the New Testa- 
ment writers to represent Christ as performing these miracles, not 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. • 79 

because he loved to heal the sick and raise the dead, but simply to 
prove, what a real son of God would have no need to prove, that he 
was the Messiah. Even. if everything that was claimed to have been 
done by him was really done as is believed, it would not prove that 
he was either a God or the Messiah. Yery many besides him have 
performed miracles, and many do yet. Indeed, as if it were no 
God like attribute at all, he gave the same power to his disciples; 
and many others who were not his disciples seem also to have 
mastered the art. 

Miracles are too common to prove anything. What man sent 
from God ever yet did not do miracles in abundance? Mahomet 
had his, and Joe Smith had his, just as Paul had his. Every sect 
in the world can tell of the wonderful and impossible things done 
by its fathers. Miracles prove nothing, and yet for Christ they are 
expected to prove everything. 

We must remark further that though there were some miracles 
that Christ could do, there were some also that he could not do. 
He could do much. He could raise the dead, make himself in- 
visible, and many other things to prove his doctrines true; he could 
not, nevertheless, save himself from the premature end which plainly 
he would have averted if he could. He could make bread and fish 
for others, but what he ate himself he was compelled to get in the 
natural way. He was, indeed, once fed by angels, but he never 
tried to feed himself. He did once walk on the water, but usually, 
like other men, he was compelled to go by row boat or sail. 

We are compelled to wonder why Christ should have lived as 
other men, obeyed all nature's laws as other men, and still should 
have had the power of a God. We notice in all these stories 
of miracles a continual tendency to get back to the natural course 
of things. Besides Christ never attempted to create anything, but 
he had a wonderful power of magnifying and expanding what was 
already made. He did not create wine, he only changed water into 
wine. He did not create the loaves and fishes, he multiplied them. 
We must add finally that Christ was evidently not fond of miracles. 
He only submitted to his part in their performance in deference to 
public opinion and its extravagant expectations. Miracles do 
violence to the present day; the most earnest believer seeks to ex- 
plain them in some natural and sensible way. 

In conclusion, I believe in miracles, and of course that Christ 
did miracles, but not as many people believe. I do not believe 
that anything supernatural or extra-natural can ever happen, 
because I believe in a Supreme Being who has power to control 
and direct all things. Nothing can happen contrary to his will or 



80 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

purpose. Everything must be in harmony with his established and 
invariable character. Things which happen contrary to the laws of 
nature, happen contrary to the laws which God has made. We 
believe in the fixedness of God's eternal nature, and it is on this 
alone that we rely. It will not answer for us to believe that God 
will do miracles, do impossible things, and act contrary to himself. 
Indeed it is not God that is assumed to do miracles, it is others who 
assume to do them in his name. But with all this, I do believe 
that miracles have happened and will happen again, things which to 
us are really wonderful and incomprehensible. I believe especially 
that some men have the power to do such miracles, such wonderful 
and incomprehensible things. Christ was pre-eminently one of these 
persons. 

It may not be unimportant to bear in mind that several persons 
after Christ, claimed that they were prophesied of old and were the 
true Messiah. One in particular, in 1666, had an immense success. 
He was styled and believed to be the only and the first born son of 
God, the Messiah, the Savior of Israel. It was in the latter view 
that he was most welcome to the Jews. He was proved by various 
miracles. The most wonderful signs marked his progress — all the 
work of the Devil, as his enemies believe. No one denies the 
signs, so easy is it for the most enlightened and honest to be im- 
posed upon. 

ELIJAH. 

To form a correct idea of Christ's character, we must take into 
account the history of Elijah, or Elias, as he is sometimes called. 
If we look at the history of Elijah as it is found in the 1st Book of 
Kings, we shall be forced to the conclusion that he was more 
emphatically the Son of God, that he was in every respect nearer to 
God, than Christ himself. He is called there pre-eminently the 
man of God, which is probably not of lighter importance than the 
expression, the Son of God. He performed miracles in comparison 
with which those of Christ were but moderate affairs. And in the 
end, when he came to die, instead of being left to be sacrificed by 
his enemies, he was seized by a whirlwind and carried to heaven in 
triumph. There are many points in common between Elijah's 
history and that of Christ. Like Christ, Elijah foreknew his 
departure from earth and prepared for it. Like Christ, he not only 
raised the dead, but he raised them in very much the same manner. 
Indeed, we shall constantly hav^e occasion to call attention to the 
fact that nearly all the features of Christ's life are prefigured in 
the different histories of the Old Testament. He is merely an old 
picture retouched by a new hand. He was merely a new prophet, 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 81 

with all the powers and properties usually belonging to the prophets 
of older days. He came, like so many prophets before him, merely 
to call the Jews to repentance, deliver prophecies, perform miracles, 
and suffer in the end for the faith that was in him. 

CONCLUSION. 

I have been endeavoring so far to give Christ a natural history, 
as opposed to any character he might get by virtue of witchcraft, 
demonology, sorcery, and miracles in general. We have seen that 
just such personages have risen before him, and just such per- 
sonages after him, though none have in any respect equaled him. 
It may be, perhaps, by this close and critical examination, that he 
becomes less a God, but he is, nevertheless, a higher, holier man. 

Let no man say I do not believe in Christ, and that I do not 
worship him. I feel that I am doing him infinitely more credit by 
believing that born a man, he became a God, than that born a God, 
he became a man. I believe that spiritually, Christ was indeed 
born of God, born as no man ever before him was born or since. 
I believe that the spirit of God pervaded and penetrated his inmost 
soul. Though I may not be willing, with others, to credit the 
miraculous conception as a physiological fact, I nevertheless believe 
in t\ie divinity of Christ. As a God, I love him, I adore him, with all 
my heart, with all my soul, and with all my might. I worship ail 
those sublime qualities which Christ possessed, his tenderness, his 
love, his humility, his mercy, his goodness, and his whole self- 
sacrificing character. Why should I not worship that Christ in 
whom these qualities are all combined? 

And still he was for all this a man. We never see him in any 
other shape or habit than that of a mortal. It was as a mortal that 
he died for us. You believe and know him to be a man; the Bikle 
tells you he was a man. You speak of him as a man, you think of 
him as a man, you have not the power within you to conceive him 
to be anything else than a man. Nevertheless, you believe him to 
be a God, and so do I. I come in the end to the same terminus 
that you do, but by routes that differ from yours very materially. 

Let us not think it strange that a man should become a God. 
Do we not know that all people who believe in God as a being, con- 
ceive him or fashion him to themselves as either a man or an animal? 
We cannot take ourselves out of our own natures, our own surround- 
ings. It is impossible for us to think of a being essentially different 
from those with which we are acquainted. It is for this reason 
that all living gods are either brutes or men. Besides the instances 
in history where men, common perishable mortals, have been deified 

or made into Gods, are certainly numerous enough. 

6 



82 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

It is not a matter of the slightest moment or concern to us 
whether Christ was precisely such a being as history has pictured 
him to be, or not. The history of no man comes down to us 
unaffected by the touches of imagination. The character of every 
hero, the moment it passes into the hands of posterity, is as a seed 
planted in the ground to grow. Its development is certain, and is 
subject to fixed and invariable laws. All histoiy has in it more or 
less of fiction, more or less of exaggeration, more or less of devia- 
tion from the facts in the case. Is it strange then that Christ, who 
grew up on the very verge of the historic era, buffeted hj the storm 
and warmed by the sun of nineteen centuries, should come down to 
this day with a character more or less distorted and fictitious? And 
how does it affect our case? It is no concern to us what things are, 
but how they appear and what they are believed to be. If we 
believe that Christ was the Son of God, it would have precisely the 
same effect upon us as if it were absolutely so. This is a strange 
fact in the nature of truth, but it is a fact nevertheless, and is beyond 
the reach of controversy. 

No matter what Christ was in his inception, whether he was or 
was not what he was represented to be, he has now proved to be for 
us the Savior of the world, one who came to redeem and save that 
which was lost. He has given us his example, he has left us his pre- 
cepts. He has given to the succeeding generations a new life and a new 
direction. He has, it may be said, regenerated the world, created it anew. 
He alone has taught us how to live in the worship of the one living God, 
and, die in the hope of a blessed immortality. 

THE MISSION OF CHRIST. 

The mission of Christ is the subject we come now more partic- 
ularly to consider. What was his plan, or the plan of the Creator? 
What did he come to accomplish, and what did he finally achieve? 
Since Christ was the great teacher of the world, it is eminently 
proper for us to determine precisely what he taught. 

In pursuing this investigation, we shall before the end of our 
journey find ourselves in just the same dilemma that we should find 
ourselves in investigating every other important question of the 
Bible. We shall find here, as we find everywhere else, that what is 
taught in one place is not taught in another ; or rather, that what is 
affirmed in one place, is flatly contradicted in another. 

Let us first endeavor to understand the true position of Christ 
as determined in Matthew. 

In Matthew he is merely a preacher; he is like one of the 
prophets of old, one who has come to call the Jews to repentance. 
In the 24th verse of the fifteenth chapter, we learn that "he was not 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 83 

sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel," indicating that 
he came to awaken sinners to a sense of their condition. In the 
11th verse of the eighteenth chapter, "For the Son of Man is come 
to save that which was lost," and then he tells about the lost sheep 
indicating that his main aim is to recall the wandering. In the 17th 
verse of the nineteenth chapter he says there is none good but God, 
and then adds, "if thou wilt enter into life, keep the command- 
ments." In the 24th verse of the same chapter he intimates that 
riches may prevent an entrance into heaven ; and in the 29th verse, 
those who have left all and followed him, adopting his faith, "shall 
inherit everlasting life. " In the 28th verse of the twentieth chap- 
ter, he speaks of giving his life as "a ransom for many," but 
probably only as a martyr does. "He that endures to the end shall 
be saved." (xxiv:13.) 

It is evident, as w*e cast our eye over Matthew, that Christ 
talked and taught substantially as other prophets before him, and 
many preachers after him, taught. He has nothing materially new; 
certain it is, he does not teach that men could only be saved by 
believing that Christ died for them. Indeed, he had not yet died, 
nor, so far as we can gather, even thought of dying for them till 
near the close of his ministry, and after he had long taught another 
doctrine of redemption. Finally, it is fixed that Matthew does not 
teach that we can only be saved by Christ's blood. 

Now then, read Mark. In the 38th verse of the first chapter, 
he came forth to preach. Most assuredly! If he came simply to be 
born and die for men's sins, he need not have tarried on earth here 
thirty years, accomplishing nothing so far as we can learn, and three 
years or more in preaching, when men were not by any means to be 
saved by preaching. In the 5th verse of the second chapter, and 
other places, he forgave their sins when he saw their faith. So he 
had power to forgive sins aside from the virtue of his blood, and 
faith was one of the conditions. 

In the 17th verse of the second chapter, as in Luke fifth chap- 
ter and 32d verse, he came "not to call the righteous, but sinners," 
and this is repeated more than once in the Testament. From this 
we must infer that there were some righteous and saved without his 
interposition or salvation. He sent his disciples to preach that men 
should repent, and they did repent, both under Jesus and his disci- 
ples and under John, without a single drop of Christ's redeeming 
blood being spilled for them. Men were to be saved as usual, we 
see, by repentance. In the 17th verse of the tenth chapter, the plain 
question is asked, what shall a man do to inherit eternal life? And 
Christ tells us; but, mark, he does not tell us it is to be done by his 
death and blood. 



84 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

In the 18th verse of the fourth chapter of Luke, he says he was 
sent to preach the Gospel to the poor, heal the broken-hearted, relieve 
the distressed. In the 43d verse of the fourth chapter, we see he is 
sent to preach the kingdom of God, like Jonah and many others. 
The 20th verse of the sixth chapter informs us that men are to be 
saved by being poor. 

In the thirteenth chapter, men are informed the}- will perish, 
or be lost, if they do not repent. In the eighteenth chapter, as in 
Mark, men are to be saved by suffering and sacrifice. 

It is only when we come to John that we find something really 
original, something of which none of the other gospels can boast. 
We have here a new picture. He wrote at a later day. He saw 
Christ through a different medium. Besides, John is a philosopher; 
the others are mere historians. In the thirteenth verse of the third 
chapter, whosoever believeth on him shall not perish. In the 16th 
and 17th verses, God so loved the world that he sent his son that 
those who believe in him shall have everlasting life ; also, that the 
world through him might be saved. Xow here is an open question, 
which we cannot decide, whether he was to be saved by Christ's 
blood, or by faith in Christ's doctrine. In John he is no more the 
minister, the servant; he is "the light of the world." He is "the 
door." But all this is new. Still we have no right to assume that 
even John meant to assume that men were to be saved in any way 
except by the rigtheousness of Christ's doctrines. So we read in the 
24th verse of the fifth chapter, that those who hear (and believe) his 
word, his teachings, shall be saved; and in the 29th verse, they are to 
be saved by doing good, and to be lost by doing evil. 

The conclusion we come to is, that nowhere in the first three gos- 
pels is it tauglit in any direct manner that tlie icorld is to be redeemed 
through the blood of Christ and his sufferings. They teach a way of 
redemption entirely foreign to this method. They have not, like 
John, something strikingly new. And even John, while he is thus 
original, can only be said to teach this doctrine in a very unsatisfac- 
tory and ambiguous manner, if at all. We do not refer to the 
other writers of the Testament, for the reason that they are later 
and could have no authority for what they have written, save 
the Gospels, and tradition. The former we have noticed, and the 
latter is not reliable. 

There is then no adequate and reliable evidence, we infer, which 
tends to show that there is any foundation for the literal truth of 
the leading proposition, that the world is to be saved by the blood 
of Christ, and that those not saved in that way ^cannot be saved at 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 85 

all. So we are thrown back upon our old position, that Christ was 
a minister and a teacher, pre-eminent above all as such, but nothing 
more. 

Christ taught, in the line of salvation, no doctrine essentially 
new. There is plainly no way of redemption opened by him that 
had not been opened from the foundation of the world. We could 
not think that God would be so unjust, so unmerciful, as to leave 
the world so many thousand years before Christ without a redeem- 
ing son or any adequate means of grace. It is more in accordance 
with our ideas of God that he careth for all men, at all times, and in 
all ages. Besides, must we, may we for one moment, think that 
that small speck of the human race, the Christian world, are to be 
saved and go to heaven, and the poor heathen who has never heard 
of Christ, and the Mahometans, and the Chinese, and the Buddists, 
and so many others who have heard of him but still trust in others, 
are to be lost and damned forever? God forbid! The idea is as 
monstrous as it is wicked. It sounds too much like the egotistic and 
idolatrous Jew. 

CHRIST A REFORMER. 

Christ was a reformer. If we may judge by what he accom- 
plished and the impress which he left upon succeeding ages, he 
has never had an equal. Viewed in this light, he is plain and intel- 
ligible; viewed in an} r other, he is an impenetrable mystery, a myth, 
a monster. 

We know indeed that we are informed that he did say that he 
came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. Now, if by fulfill is 
meant to carry out and observe, we venture to doubt that Christ 
ever made any such declaration. As this could only have been said 
for effect, and as besides Christ Avas no politician, we suggest that 
this clause has come from the hand of the commentator. 

Christ was not a combative person, he was simply a minister 
and a teacher. He does not find it in harmony with his nature to 
put himself in direct antagonism with any party. He is not fond of 
condemning so much those who are vicious, as vice in the abstract. 
He teaches, he warns, he exhorts, he moralizes, but he has none of 
the bitterness of the partisan. This being his character, we do not 
wonder that he does not carry on an open war with the Jews and set 
himself up as an opponent to their doctrines. 

It is not certain that Christ at first had any fixed notions of his 
purposes or plans. Those things developed themselves as he passed 
along. But it is certain that there was no harmony between his 
spirit and that of the old Mosaic law. No matter what he or others 



86 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

may have conceived he came for, he did prove in the end to be a 
reformer of Jewish rules and rites, and in so far at least he became 
a destroyer of the law. He holds the same relation to the Jewish 
law as a reformer, that Luther does to popery, only in a more 
enlarged sense. He came to preach a new law, a new salva- 
tion. Like all great men, like Luther and Mahomet, he came in his 
due time. The age was prepared for his reception. He was the 
representative of its progress. He taught as the expounder of a 
new faith, but he was really the exponent of doctrines every one of 
which had arisen and been gaining ground two or three centuries 
before his own appearance. 

Does not Christ over and over again repudiate the cherished 
doctrines of the Old Testament? Why, *in the very chapter (the 
fifth) where he is said not to come to destroy the law, he does go on 
to destroy it, by giving first the sayings of Moses and the prophets 
and then entering his own protest against them with that emphatic, 
"but I say unto you." 

What are the conditions upon which mortals are to enter the 
kingdom? Does Christ ever insist upon the forms, the ritual of the 
old Mosaic law, or has he a means of grace peculiarly his own? 
What regard does Christ pay to fasting, feasting, circumcision, to 
washing of hands and cups, almsgiving, sacrifices, and even prayer 
and the keeping of the Sabbath? He slights all of them; with the 
exception of prayer, to which he attaches some little value, he 
tramples them all under foot. The Jews expected to get to heaven 
by the observance of forms; Christ would have us get there by the 
regeneration of the soul. Christ's faith is religion proper; that of the 
Jews is simply idolatry. What of all that was sacred to the Jews 
was sacred to Jesus also? Their temple, worth more to them than 
all else, he seemed to desire to destroy. JSTot one stone should be 
left on the other. There was no harmony between the two; there 
was even open war. Crucifixion was an act of vengeance, and 
simply a matter of natural consequence. 

Paul seems to have understood Christ's position in this regard, 
and he appears in his writings with an able defence for Christ's 
abolishing the law. 

We thus know what Christ has proved to be, a destroyer of the 
law, an innovator, a reformer. He desired to overturn the temple. 
He said he would do so, and he has effectually done it. There is, 
to mark the place where it stood, only the stones that have fallen 
from it, and these lie piled up now a vast and disorderly mass of 
debris. The building has fallen, the structure of the Jewish law 



THE NEW TESTAMEN1. 87 

has tumbled to the earth, but we still preserve too strongly its 
impression upon our Christian hearts to say that it has been totally 
and forever annihilated. 

But we must not forget that everywhere the life of Christ, as 
we have it, is full of contradiction. He was born a Jew, and he 
was never able to divest himself entirely of his Jewish nationality. 
In the earliest days of his ministry at least, he taught for the Jews 
alone; indeed, he came only to the lost sheep of Israel. It is 
through the workings of this spirit that he was impelled to observe, 
even to the end of his days, more or less of .the Jewish formalities, 
things in which he does not seem to have put the slightest trust, and 
in which he had not the slightest sympathy. 

No system was ever invented that had not in it as much dross 
as pure metal. Christ's is certainly not an exception. 

THE ORTHODOX CHRIST. 

What monstrous ideas orthodoxy has of the character of Christ! 
He is a man and a God — half man and half God — all man, all God. 
What a mysterious commingling of incongruous sentiments ! Some 
consider him simply a God ; others think him the God, the only God 
there is ; some think he is merely an angel, the chief of angels ; 
some think he is only a man; some think he existed from the 
beginning of the world. "A divine nature, a natural soul and a 
human body." Did the Hindoos or savages of the Polynesian 
islands ever discover a God with a more monstrous make up than 
that of Christ? A compound of flesh and spirit, born of a woman 
but in a most remarkable way. Created when the world was made, 
and then re-generated 4,000 years afterward. He came down to this 
world and then went back again. He came a spirit and returned a 
man. Was there ever such a prodigy before! And where is the 
evidence that one single phase of this story is true? It is all the 
work of fancy. And with what assurance it is set down before us 
as fact! Now the whole truth is, Christ was only a man, and no- 
body ever pretended in his time that he was anything else but a 
man. His godliness was an after-thought, a development of the 
Dark Ages. We know him as a man, we see him as a man, he never 
did anything but as a man. 

Again, here is this absurdity. If he was a god, he was a god, 
that is one of several gods, or the God, the great God. But shall 
we suppose that it was God himself that came down to atone for 
man's sins? No, God would not do that. And that is not the 
story. The story is, we all know, that God gave his son, his only son 
at that, to save us from the penalty we had incurred. Is it not 



88 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

strange that God had a son, and only one son, and that not by some 
heavenly creature, but by a poor deluded woman of earth? What 
can be a more outrageous story than that, if we take the story 
literally, as we must take it, if we take it at all? Only one son, 
and yet it is said over and over again that we are his children and 
he is our father, and yet Christ is the only son he ever had, and him 
the Jews crucified! 

Xo, Christ is a God, one of two at least, if not more. Do the 
orthodox men concede that there are two Gods, when the Bible tells 
us over and over again that there is only one? Or was Christ only 
half a God? Or is he an angel, or what is he? Inextricable and 
shameful confusion of ideas! We might posit every one of these 
things on the character of any great and good man that ever lived. 

CHRIST THE SOX OF GOD. 

Christ is the son of God just as every righteous man is the son 
of God. As he was supremely good, he was supremely godlike. 
Practically considered, he is divine, and as such deserves the worship 
of all lovers of the race. We have no occasion at all for the 
" miraculous conception," with all its accompanying heathenisms. 
Christ's life was so godlike and corresponded so nearly in idea with 
the deliverer that was expected, that it is not to be wondered at that 
a superstitious and devotional people should have ascribed to him a 
divine origin. It has been done in other cases and will no doubt be 
done again. It is impossible not to believe that some men are more 
nearly connected with God than others are. Christ is God; that is, 
God as he develops himself in the human form. 

Of the eight witnesses who testify in the Xew Testament, six 
of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke, James, Peter and Jude do not iden- 
tify Jesus with God. Of these. Matthew, Mark and Luke advocate 
his human character only. John and Paul alone seem to suspect 
that he may be a God — but even they, Paul especially, seem to have 
grove doubts in the matter. On what slender evidence does the 
divinity of Christ rest ! 

" THE DOCTRINES OF CHRIST. 
It is a remarkable and important fact that the teachings of 
Christ have all at some time or other been cast in the mould of 
tradition. It is perhaps absolutely certain that not one word of his 
doctrines was ever put in writing during his day; he neither wrote 
a book himself nor commissioned any one to write one for him. We 
have his words then as they came by hearsay and report. We have 
them as men understood them and as they remembered them. But 
what is more striking than the difference with which men under- 
stand things and remember them? 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 89 

Is it strange then that Christ has various characters and ever 
changing positions in the different writings of the New Testament? 
Is it to be wondered at that he says things in Matthew which he 
does not say at all in Mark, Luke and John, or if he does, says in 
a manner and with a plan very different? That disagreement exists, 
sometimes in matters of detail, and sometimes on points of the 
greatest importance, and we must make the most of it. 

Christ taught many things. In some instances he may have 
erred, according to our conceptions. It is impossible to invent any 
scheme of morality or religion that shall not have some falsehood 
coupled with much truth. Again, Christ must have been misrepre- 
sented in many things. How is it possible that any one, even those 
associated with him, to say nothing of those who wrote after him, 
should ever have fully comprehended him ? Such a thing never has 
happened and never will happen. 

We cannot know precisely what Christ said and what he taught, 
but we do know the direction and effect of his doctrines. There is 
no question but that the teachings of Christ were holy and righteous, 
the doctrines of a holy and righteous being. Those Christians who 
for seventeen centuries claimed to represent him, we are not willing 
to take as faithful exponents of his doctrines. They either did not 
understand him or did not choose to follow his instructions. The 
spirit of intolerance and persecution which characterised them 
never found a place in the heart of our Savior. The fierce men of 
the middle and earlier ages were Christians merely in name, and 
could in no sense be fairly termed followers of Christ. We suspect that 
much of the barbarous conduct of these men may justly be laid at 
the door of the Old Testament, certainly not at that of the New. 
He that blessed his enemies on the cross could not have had the 
spirit which actuated the leaders of the inquisition. 

Christ is indeed represented to have said, "I bring not peace 
but a sword;" but it is evident that he spoke of this as the inevita- 
ble result of the doctrines which he taught, doctrines whose success 
implied a revolution in the worship and the religion of the day and 
age in which he lived. He that counseled not only forgiveness but 
love toward enemies, should not, we are sure, be brought forward 
as being responsible for the acts of those who seem to consider 
resistance a grace and intolerance a virtue. And there is besides, 
the cursing of the fig tree because it did not bear fruit, even out of 
its own time. These and a few other like instances, such as his 
rough conduct in the temple, are either stories fabricated or facts 
misstated, or they may belong to those strange divergencies which 
we find sometimes in the history of all great men. 



90 TEE NEW TESTAMENT. 

Xone of the doctrines which Christ taught were really original 
with him. But though they had been taught before by others, they 
had never prevailed with the Jews. It was the office of Christ not 
to originate, but to impress and enforce. He collected into one 
great embodiment all that in morals seemed to him beautiful and 
true. He has taught us how to live and how to die : and above all 
he has given up his own life to advance the success and ensure the 
triumph of his own glorious teachings. 

Christ taught for a better and brighter age than the one in 
which he lived. Xearly eighteen centuries have passed since his 
ministry, yet even to-day his doctrines rind an echo in the heart of 
every man who is just and true. If we would live happy in this 
world, if we would be truly successful, if we would inherit a glori- 
ous immortality, and live in the memory of those who come after 
us. we must take Christ for our Savior, our teacher, our sovereign, 
and our guide. 

Christ teaches eternal salvation not by means of any such forms 
and formalities as we find prescribed in the Old Testament. He 
enters immediately upon the essence of the question. He teaches 
salvation by becoming better men. by obeying the laws of God, 
which are the laws of nature, by having faith in God's wisdom and 
his works, faith in his own teaching, faith in the virtue of repent- 
ance and in the need of doing good. 

It is very evident that Christ had an idea of God very different 
from that which was possessed by the prophets of old. He teaches 
obedience to God as the first and the last, the beginning and the end 
of all law, and that is sound and good doctrine even to-day. He 
who obeys not God and fears not his commandments, he who does 
not stop to inquire what God wills, must surely in the end suffer 
the penalty, just such a penalty, and one just as certain, as that 
which all pay who transgress the laws of nature. Christ does not 
distinguish God from nature and place him somewhere outside the 
world. 

"With Christ, God is not a monstrous man. he is a spirit, the 
living and moving principles embodied all in one. He is supremacy 
personified. ^Vith Christ, God is the Supreme Being, our Heavenly 
Father, infinite in wisdom and power, and as infinite in mercy and 
goodness ; but at the same time he is inflexible, impartial, unchange- 
able. He is no more the weak and despicable tyrant of the Old. 
He is no more a god of melted brass or hewn stone, a wrathful and 
selfish being, to be appeased or persuaded by heathen mummery or 
useless declamation. He punishes, as nature punishes, not to satisfy 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 91 

his spleen but to remedy evils. He is ever just, ever kind, ever 
true. Finally, lie teaches us that man hath need of God, but not 
that God hath need of man. 

You will mark this important advance also: he lays down 
certain conditions which are to be fulfilled not to please God simply 
and gratify his vanity, but that through them we may be happy, 
and finally may be saved. ' He has continually before him as his 
aim, our own good and our own salvation. It is assumed that God 
can do without us, that when we serve him, we are simply serving 
ourselves. Religion and morality with him are identical, insepar- 
able; to be a follower of Christ implies at the same time an honest man 
and a good citizen. 

Christ taught many hundred years ago, and of course, what 
might have been good doctrine then may not be so good now. 
Besides, no system of any kind ever was perfect; even nature itself 
seems scarcely ever to attain perfection complete. Every thing, , 
even every idea or plan, has within it the seeds of its own destruc- 
tion. Perhaps the system which Christ has given us hardly 
constitutes an exception. It, too, has its defects and weaknesses, 
but they are remarkably few. There is but little that is not whole- 
some to-day, though perhaps some things are carried to extremes, 
some things which it would not be advisable, not to say proper, for 
us to follow. 

In this connection we may notice his doctrine upon riches. 
There is no kind of doubt that he was a consistent opponent to all 
worldly cares. But he went even far beyond that; he seems, if he 
is faithfully reported, to have despised all provision for our most 
ordinary daily wants, assuming that as God clothed the lilies of the 
field, he would also clothe us. "Take no thought of the morrow; 
take no thought; saying, what shall we eat?" Now, either Christ 
never said this, or we do not understand him, or he said what we 
cannot adopt as sound doctrine for us. We know very well that if 
we waited for God to clothe us as he does the lilies, we would be 
■certain in the end to go naked. Nature teaches us a law full as 
valuable as any Christ has given, and that is the law of labor. We 
have learned in this age that if we would live, we must work. We 
must make some provision for the morrow, or the morrow will find 
us unprovided for. But Christ lived in another age, in a different 
country, a country where nature did more for man and left less for 
man to do for himself. 

There is another thought in this connection. There is no doubt 
that Christ expected a speedy dissolution of the world, and that the 
kingdom would come presently, was what he confidently expected. 



92 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

That idea he seems never to lose sight of; it gave its impress to all 
his plans, and measured and directed all his progress. Did it not 
have some influence on this labor problem? It was natural that if 
men were only to tarry here for a brief season, they would need but 
little subsistence. 

But nevertheless the moral even here points in the right direc- 
tion. "Men cannot serve God and Mammon;" that is true, for 
where their treasure is, there will their hearts be also. Men devoted 
to riches are selfish and ambitious men; they are not and cannot be 
devoted Christians also. Riches make us neither happier, nor wiser, 
nor better men. A competence is good, but that suffices. So also 
he evidently, in the sixth chapter of Matthew, means to urge upon 
us, when he speaks of our taking no thought of ourselves, the 
importance of relying upon God and of having less confidence in 
ourselves. This is needful. 

Christ's whole doctrine is evidently directed against a life of 
pleasure, any course that shall indicate that we are wrapt up in the 
present and are become forgetful of the future. And no philosophy 
could be more sound. He who has lived long has certainly learned 
in the end that the pleasures of this world cannot satisfy us. They 
are vain, they are transitory. The heart yearns for something 
more, something lasting, a consciousness of dut}^ well performed, a 
clear conscience, an approving God. 

But after all, Christ was no stoic, no Roman Catholic friar. He 
never taught ascetic doctrines, never taught the necessity of pleasing 
a wicked being by torturing our own bodies. In this he seems to 
have differed materially from John the Baptist. Christ nowhere 
teaches that this life must necessarily be one of sin and suffering. 
He even condemns fasting and long prayers, as he condemns all 
unnecessary formalities. The objects of Christ, the necessary 
course of his life, and the labor which he had to perform, prevented 
him from turning aside to any of the enjoyments of this world. 
He was abstracted from the cares of this life, and devoted entirely 
to the service of God and his cause. Still, we read that he ate and 
drank as other men, and that the house of feasting and pleasure he 
was by no means accustomed to avoid. 

It is evident, however, that Christ in his teaching carried his 
disregard of this world quite to extremes, as we have intimated 
before in reference to riches and labor. It will not answer for us to 
despise this world; it will not answer for us to count upon the 
speedy coming of the kingdom, as Christ and his disciples did. 
God has not made this world to render us miserable ; it is as well 
adapted to our wants and condition as it well could be. It is only 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 93 

miserable as we make it so by neglecting the will of God and refus- 
ing to obey tlie laws of nature. But even Christ, you will observe, 
never teaches that all men are damned of necessity through Adam. 
He says, indeed, there are none righteous, no, not one; and that we 
know is true. But that does not imply that all men are irretrievably 
lost. He came only to save that which was lost, implying, of 
course, that all were not so. 

Again, when he teaches us to love our enemies, to bless them 
that curse us, and turn to them the one cheek when the other has 
been smitten, he is evidently carrying a good thought to impracti- 
cable limits. It is not in our hearts to love those who hate us; we 
must of necessity make some distinction between those who are our 
enemies and those who are our friends. But the spirit of the 
doctrine is right and leads to good results. It teaches us to be for- 
giving and merciful; it condemns revenge and malice. It is the 
mark of a noble mind and stout heart to be able to rise above the 
promptings of our animal nature and forgive our enemies. Our 
own happiness, our own success, will always be promoted by ban- 
ishing forever from our hearts all feeling of enmity, hatred and 
revenge. We regard this spirit of forgiveness as the noblest attribute 
of the human heart, noble because it requires so great an effort and 
so great a sacrifice on our own part. 

JOHN THE BAPTIST. 

What was his errand ? He was a precursor. But why that ? 
What did he do to prepare the way for Christ ? He could not have 
done much in that direction when he was only six months older than 
Jesus, and when also the ministry of the two must have begun at 
the same time. It was an ill season to give such a notice after 
Christ had appeared, and it does not seem that he gave that notice 
before the appearance. 

The more we examine the history of John, and the more light 
we get upon his character, the more shall we be impressed with the 
belief that he had a career of his own independent of any one ; that 
he was not a mere forerunner, a blower of trumpets for Jesus, the 
coming Messiah. He had a birth almost as miraculous as that 
reputed to Christ himself. Even in the Testament, especially in 
Luke, we find that Elizabeth, John's mother, was a barren mother, 
indicating that ifjshe had a child, it must be by a miracle, a child 
born of God. Indeed, both parents were too old to have children. 
He was even filled with the Holy Ghost from the time he was first 
conceived. An angel, the same one spoken of in connection with 
the history of Christ, came to his mother to announce his coming. 



94 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

Indeed, he came into the world with honors almost equal to those of 
our Savior. The character given him in Luke, you will observe, is 
almost that of a Messiah. He is not there represented as one who is 
simply to give notice of Christ's coming, but rather to give light to 
them that sit in darkness, and "to give knowledge of salvation unto 
his people by the remission of their sins." In Matthew, always 
much more original than Luke, we find nothing of his strange birth, 
nor of his connection with Jesus. He is merely announced as 
preaching in those days in the wilderness of Judea, and saying: 
"Repent ye. for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." John, it is 
agreed on all sides, did not content himself with foretelling Christ. 
He was a minister with a philosophy of his own, and a very severe 
philosophy it was, too. He had a very rough manner of living, and 
was evidently a rough man, naturally taking to the wilderness, living 
upon locusts and wild honey, and having his raiment of camel's 
hair. "He preached the baptism of repentance for the remission 
of sins." — Mark i:4. He taught a very different doctrine, it is 
agreed, from that of Christ. Xor did he stop teaching and preach- 
ing after the appearance of the one whose coming he came to fore- 
tell. He had many disciples of his own. Indeed it is very plain 
that he was something else than a forerunner. His sect and that of 
Christ must have been rivals. He came neither eating nor drinking 
as Christ did, and that baptism which with him was evidently a 
"hobby," Christ did not seem to consider quite so important himself. 
So striking was his appearance, and so impressive his doctrines, he 
was even taken for the Messiah himself. 

In this connection we must consider the various and conflicting 
accounts of the manner in which he fulfilled his mission of pre- 
cursor. In the third chapter of Matthew, Jesus comes to John to 
be baptized as an ordinary disciple. In the fourteenth and fifteenth 
verses it appears that John was aware of the true character of the 
one who thus presented himself. But when we come to the 
sixteenth and seventeenth verses, Christ seems for the first time to 
be designated by the spirit of God descending upon him like a dove, 
and pointing him out as the beloved son of God. We read in 
profane history of kings and other great persons being designated in 
a similar manner while yet in their youth, undeveloped and unknown. 
It is evident then that Christ was quite unknown when he came to 
John for baptism, and the first intimation we have of his extra- 
ordinary character is the occurrence of this prodigy. This idea is 
demonstrated to be the true one when we come down as late as the 
eleventh chapter and find John enquiring, in the greatest uncertainty, 
whether " thou art he that should come, or do we look for another?'" 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 95 

It is further corroborated by Mark, first chapter, when Jesus came 
with the multitude, evidently incognito, and was pointed out for the 
first by the spirit in the likeness of a dove. By the way, is it not 
strange that if John and Jesus were related, as stated in Luke, and 
John had now become nearly thirty years old, that they should not 
recognize each other with less trouble ? Nothing is said of their ever 
having known each other or being related, outside of the strange 
story of the conception. In Luke, also, 'he must have been baptized 
incognito among the multitude. This is curious, when Mary, 
knowing she was pregnant of the Lord, had abode three months 
with the mother of John. It is still more curious that John and 
Jesus being thus related, and the latter being pointed out in such a. 
wonderful manner as the beloved son of God, John should still 
doubt and finally send two of his disciples to enquire: "Art thou 
he that should come?" Here John, the Evangelist, has a different 
story, as he usually has. The story, which is uncertain and 
preponderating between extremes in the other gospels, has, in the 
later days of John, become fixed and certain. John the Baptist 
here "bears witness of Christ and says: This is he of whom I spake." 
John seeth Jesus coming unto him (i:29.) and exclaims: "Behold the 
Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world." This, you 
will see, is all new. John, in his gospels, thus tells an entirely 
new tale. 

The conclusions we must come to in this matter are inevitable. 
The accounts are conflicting and irreconcilable, simply because they 
have no single and well established basis. They have come from 
reports well or ill founded, reports carried along through different 
channels, and diverging continually as they advance. It is evident 
from the very accounts themselves that the different authors could 
have had no better authority for the relation they have given than 
rumors and reports. What have been stated as facts are merely 
the inferences, in many cases, which have found their conception 
in a fanciful brain. It is probable that Christ and John were both 
developed about the same time. There are many reasons to suppose 
that Christ was at first a mere disciple of John, and that when John 
came to a premature and violent end, Christ took up the subject in 
a new light, and developed himself into the extraordinary'personage 
which we now find him to be. 

Perhaps no better authority can be given for the position that 
John was the precursor, than the fact that he came shortly before 
Christ, and may have taught a doctrine having much in common 
with that of our Savior. The Jews, putting a false construction or 
a wrong application upon some chapters of the Old Testament 



96 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

(Malachi, iv:5; Isaiah, xl:3; Malachi, iii :1), were led to expect 
such a forerunner. It was one of the most natural things in the 
world to apply it to John, with or without sufficient reason. 

In order to have all the prophecies fulfilled, an attempt was 
made to identify John with Elijah or Elias, of whom Malachi speaks 
in the third chapter. But here we have those usual marks of 
weakness and vacillation which we find in so many other historical 
portions of the Bible. John declares positively that he is not the 
Elias, but Christ affirms as positively that he is, and between the 
two the matter hangs in doubt. 

Here, as in almost every other essential feature of Christ's 
history, he runs parallel with individuals in the Old Testament. 
David was his ancestor. David had a precursor in Samuel (1 Sam. 
xvi) ; so it was natural that Christ, his son, should have one also in 
John the Baptist. 

TRANSFIGURATION. 

"We cannot have time to dwell upon all, or even nearly all, of 
the features of Christ's character, but the subject of his transfigur- 
ation is of special importance, and we give it a passing notice. 

According to Matthew, Jesus took Peter, James and John and 
went up to a high mountain apart, "and was transfigured before 
them. " But who shall tell us why he took but three of his disciples, 
and why he was transfigured, and what might be the meaning of 
transfiguration ? We can no more answer this than tell why he was 
tempted of the Devil, when there was no sin in him, and why he 
fasted so much as forty days in the wilderness, when fasting would 
do no good to the son of God. He seems to have taken his disciples 
as witnesses, as he expected something unusual and desired to have 
corroborative evidence. It was not his custom thus to take his 
disciples with him for ordinary prayer. 

But Mark tells another story. Jesus came to a certain place 
and "began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy." — xiv:33. He 
told them to tarry there and watch. He went forward a little and 
fell to the ground, so great was his fear of death and his agony. He 
came back and found them asleep; three times he came back and 
each time found them asleep. For what were they to watch ? That 
is left quite in the dark, and what their sleep had to do with their 
final sad fate, no one can tell us. He says expressly, in the thirty- 
eighth verse, fourteenth chapter, "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into 
temptation.' 1 '' Still in other portions of the chapter there is a leaning 
to the idea that perhaps they were placed there to prevent Christ's 
arrest, which actually did take place shortly after. But they could 
do no more than watch, for they were not of sufficient strength for 



TEE NEW TESTAMENT. 97 

defence. Had he apprehended an attack, he would have taken all 
his disciples. To tell the truth about it, the whole story in Mark is 
in inextricable confusion. It is unquestionable that this is the trans- 
figuration story of Matthew, but put in the wrong place, at the 
wrong time, with the wrong object in view, and completely disjointed 
every way. 

The version of Luke differs very materially from that of either 
of the others. Here Christ does not take a chosen three of his 
disciples, and go forward^asHf expecting some extraordinary occur- 
rence. His disciples were near-, he had simply gone forward a little 
to pray, as he had done before. They were to pray, as in Mark, 
that they enter not into temptation. 

Matthew says it was Moses and Elias that were seen talking 
with him; but Luke has a more plausible rendering, by saying it 
was an angel strengthening Jesus in his agony. Nothing is said 
about coming three times to his disciples, or of his chiding them for 
not keeping the proper watch. But the connection appears again, 
as in Mark, by saying, "while he yet spake," Judas and the multi- 
tude came. 

We look upon the whole of this account as arising from a 
desire to glorify Jesus and finish the parallel with his original, 
Moses, who also shone brightly on the mount. No material change 
could have been effected in the spirit or character of Jesus, for he 
was from the beginning the Son of God, and hence perfect in all 
respects. 

There are many curious things about this story. To say nothing 
of the discrepancies in the different accounts, it is wonderful how 
those disciples should have been able to recognize Moses and Elias, 
after being dead so many hundred years, saying nothing about their 
appearing in the first place. We wonder why a voice should have 
come again from heaven, declaring that this is my beloved son, hear 
him, when we had heard this very evidence a long time before. We 
wonder, also, why he was so particular that they should tell no man 
of this vision, when it is plain that all they came with him for was 
to be able to recount what they*had seen. 

There is, you will observe, much in common between this story 
and that of Christ's going forward to pray and leaving his disciples 
to watch. Mark tells us that he took the very same disciples as 
those named in the transfiguration. In Luke we find an angel 
strengthening Jesus, the counterpart of Moses and Elias. There is 
too much similarity in these accounts for them not to have had the 
same origin. 

7 



98 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

CHRIST'S ARREST AND DEATH. 

We now propose to show that Christ's execution was a natural 
and inevitable result, and no part of the original and divine plan. 
At least, we have this dilemma : If Christ could have saved himself 
and did not, there is nothing to excite our sympathy, for it is a clear 
case of deliberate self-destruction. But, on the other hand, if he 
was crucified in spite of all he could do to prevent it, we must have 
a very low estimate of his power as a divine being, otherwise he 
might and would have rescued himself. As is usrral in so many 
other cases, we find him represented in the gospels as acting both 
parts, that of the voluntary and that of the unwilling victim. 

We repeatedly read of his escaping from his enemies by various 
expedients, sometimes by fleeing and sometimes by rendering him- 
self invisible. But we are compelled to think that he who could 
raise the dead and heal the sick, to say nothing of feeding several 
thousand with a few small loaves and some fishes, ought not to be 
compelled to resort to such petty artifices, and those too so indic- 
ative of weakness. 

Again, he knew, we are told, that Judas would betray him. But 
if he thus knew that he was to die, and in that manner, and if that 
was the chief aim for which he came into the world, we cannot see 
why Judas should be esteemed such a terrible malefactor. He only 
did what Christ and God both intended and desired should be done. 
He might have been premature in his action, nothing more. Xeither 
can we see why Christ should by various expedients seek to put off 
his execution, when it was determined from the beginning, and 
besides, was the object for which he came into the world. 

But we have not time to notice all, nor even many of the dis- 
crepancies in the gospel accounts of Christ's arrest and death, nor 
to speak of the surprising things that occurred. We wish only to 
notice that he was betrayed by Judas, was pointed out by him 
(indeed, for that Judas was hired). Can we think that Christ was 
so obscure a character that he had to be pointed out by a hired 
malefactor? This circumstance seems to have been much embel- 
lished and to have been put in here to heighten the effect. There 
seems to have been a need felt for such a character, and he must be 
put somewhere, this Judas. Christ fell a victim to the basest 
treachery. He was betrayed, and thus he has a strong claim upon 
our sympathies. He could not thus have been a willing victim. 
But all this, like so many other things, was done "that the scrip- 
tures might be fulfilled." The type of the whole story is to be 
found in different parts of the Old Testament. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 99 

The whole history as given by Matthew goes to prove Christ a 
most unwilling victim. Did he not pray to God that the bitter cup 
might pass from him? He seems not for one moment to have 
thought of his mission of duty, that the world through him might 
be saved. "He was exceeding sorrowful unto death." 

Matthew tells substantially the same story, and so does Luke. 
In John we find Jesus repeatedly escaping and by some means 
trying to evade detection. But when we come to the eighteenth 
chapter, the tactics begins to change. Jesus does not wait for Judas 
to betray him, but steps up boldly and says, "I am he." Judas 
merely stood with his adversaries ! 

So the conclusion we come to in this matter, is that Christ was 
an unwilling victim, that he died, like many a martyr, in defence of 
his cause. He had sought to undermine and destroy the old Jewish 
rites, and it is no wonder he was crucified in the end. The death 
of Christ was, like his birth, that of a pure mortal. That he died 
for the salvation of the world, is in a certain sense evidently true. 
His death and his sufferings have drawn his followers more closely 
to him than anything else could have effected. Had he not died 
upon the cross, he might perhaps have passed for an ordinary man, 
and the world have gone along without faith in his doctrines. 

THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 

Had we the time and space, we would like to dwell upon the 
circumstantial and wonderful account of the crucifixion of Christ, 
as it is related in the gospels. We would like to consider how 
improbable, not to say impossible, that the whole earth should have 
been darkened for several hours before he died, the sun refusing to 
give its accustomed light; how when he died the veil of the temple 
was rent from top to bottom most unaccountably; how the earth 
quaked and rocks were rent; how the graves were opened and 
saints walked out from their graves, with full manly forms, as in 
days of old. We would like to inquire also what ever became of 
those saints, those strangely resurrected beings of whom we hear 
not a word more, save that they appeared, only, as we suspect, that 
the effect might be heightened and the Scripture might be fulfilled. 
We would like to consider, besides all this, how strange it is that 
the four accounts of the four gospels should differ from 'each other 
in so many and such important particulars; how the fourth leaves 
out nearly all the wonderful things, the third and second speaking 
only of the darkness and the rending of the veil, and leaving 
Matthew to have an account peculiarly and surprisingly his own. 
We would like to consider finally how very probable it is, taking 



100 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

into account all the circumstances of the case, that these were 
stories, diversified as we see them, and on the occasion of the death 
of God, developing as we might expect in the minds of a people so 
imaginative as the Jews. He was born of a God, and it was natural 
to expect that he should die like a God. But we hurry over all 
these things with the above passing notice, to dwell upon the matter 
of the Resurrection. 

It is hardly necessary to intimate, in the beginning, that there 
are a great many strange and unaccountable things about this resur- 
rection. It is useless here to point out in detail the many points of 
divergence in the several accounts of the Evangelists. Suffice it to 
say, they are very many, very great, and quite irreconcilable. They 
are there, and all can read for themselves. They cannot all be true, 
cannot all be well founded, cannot all be divine in their origin or 
conception. The impress of tradition and report is here most 
evident and undeniable. 

The first thing that we would ask is, why that inevitable three 
days? Why would not two days, or one, or no time at all, answer 
all the ends? We suspect that, as usual, it was only to fulfill the 
Scriptures. Three days, you will remember, is a very sacred period 
of time in the Bible. Jonah remained precisely three days in the 
whale's belly before he was resurrected. 

Again, we cannot help but think that possibly he that rose up 
after so short a time, was not really dead; that he was perhaps only 
in a trance. Then, too, it must be taken into account that Christ's 
returning to life so shortly after his death, completely withdraws 
from him all the merits of his dying for us. It was no dying at all. 
He did not give up his life for us ; or if he did, he soon took it 
back again. He did not lose his life; what is soon found, is not 
really lost. No, surely, at the present stage of science, that death 
which is changed to life in three days, is merely suspended anima- 
tion. Xo one can say that Christ died really for us ; he did not 
remain dead. It was only a kind of sleep. What would we esteem 
death, if we felt sure, as Christ did, that we should rise on the third 
day? Only sleep. 

We have then this dilemma. It will not answer to decide that 
Jesus did not die. But if he did really die, he really did not rise. 
jSTow comes the question, did he rise? What or where is the evi- 
dence? After a certain time stated, the grave was found empty. 
No mortal saw him rise from it, and it will not answer to rely too 
strongly on what angels say in such cases. The grave was found 
empty, that was all. But it is no uncommon circumstance now to 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 101 

find graves empty after persons have been buried. Bodies, from 
various motives, may be and have been stolen from their resting 
places. How do we knoto that the common report among the Jews, 
that "his disciples came by night and stole him away while we 
slept," was not the true one? But that is not all; he appeared unto 
his disciples and others. But even this is full as common now-a- 
days as to find graves empty. Men see, or believe they see, persons 
reappearing after death. They talk, these dead persons do; they 
act, they go and they return. They are mortal in shape, but 
spiritual in character. We call them ghosts. Perhaps it was the 
ghost of Christ that appeared. We know it must have been his 
ghost, if he were really dead. 

Nor can it be claimed for Christ that his resurrection, which 
we consider so anomalous and to which we attach such an extreme 
value, was a matter of such vast importance after all? Surely, he 
was not the first, and perhaps he was not the last, who rose from 
the dead. The Bible gives us several instances of persons raised 
from the dead. No, if we must rely upon the Scriptures, there is 
nothing peculiar or godlike in Christ's being thus resurrected. 

In Matthew and Mark, Christ's reappearance is treated about as 
an ordinary ghost story of the middle ages. But here Luke is, as 
usual, uncommonly diffuse. Christ appears to "two of them," 
strangely incognito. The part he plays here is very striking, we 
will not say absurd. He makes a long speech, he travels with them 
a long journey, talking all the while; he expounds all the scriptures 
concerning himself,beginning from Moses and bringing in all the 
prophets. And when they drew nigh unto the village, ' ' he made 
as though he would have gone farther." But they constrained him. 
"And he went in to tarry with them." And it came to pass as 
they were all eating, and Christ with them also, their eyes were 
opened, and they now for the first recognized him. But to what 
purpose? . " He vanished out of their sight " immediately. We are 
reminded of the deities in Virgil, who are wont to vanish into thin 
air. But again, at another time and in another place, he shows 
himself. Strange to say, though they had heard of his resurrection 
and some of them had seen him and supped with him, they were 
terrified and affrighted, and " supposed they had seen a spirit" (as 
they probably had). Then Christ enters into a long argument to 
prove that he is not a spirit. As further proof, he took broiled fish, 
and honeycomb, and did eat before them. Proof enough! 

John, of course, has his own original account here as elsewhere. 
He tells us in one place (xxi:13) "this is now the third time that 



1 ■ TEE XEW TE8TAMENT. 

Jesofi hi ited himself . " This proves to us conclusively that Christ 
only tarried on earth as long as he did, forty days, we believe, for 
the purpose of procing that he was really flesh and bones, and had 
n from the dead. It is strange, is it not. that his ascension to 
heaven should have been delayed forty days f<: inple a pur- 

pose as that. Is it not plain too, that when he had been resurrected 
he belonged in heaven, and appeared here only as a spin: 
residence here, we observe, was temporary, abnormal, and to us 
poor unintelligent mortals, absolutely inexplicable ! When we 
thus see Christ performing such weak and miserable parts, only to 
prove that he was the Messiah, and hence risen from the dead, Lb it 
possible, we say ? not to feel impressed with the belief that he i f 
only an actor in a drama, and that he has his part amgned to him 
by the author of the pie:-: No, that is certain, the arguments are 
those of the people who constructed the story. Christ himself, we 
venture to affirm, would not condescend to things so low. 

I: is . fatal circumstance that Christ remained in this world 
after his death so few days only, just long enough to prove that he 
had really risen from the dead- It is fatal too, that he appeared 
only to his friends and followers, and never has been assumed to 
have lived in the world as an ordinary man and as he himself did 
before his crucifi x ion. His appearance was necessarily v-ry secret, 
or his executioners would have crucified him again. He appeared, 
you will notice, and disappeared, at intervals, and finally failed Xo 
show himself at all. His habits were peculiarly those of the gh: sts 
of the earlier a; 

Things that are possible or probable we can believe on slight 
evidence. Thus we can believe that Christ died. We know him 
only as a man; he lived as a man, and we are not surprised that he 
died as a man. His disciples had come to believe him a god. and it 
is no wonder that they were confounded to find that he could be 
brought even unto death. It is no wonder that their confidence in 
his Messiahship was somewhat shaken by his crucifixion. But we 
have no such difficulties, for we do not believe that he was so much, 
a god as to be immortal. 

Things that are impossible we cannot believe on any amount of 
evidence. But even if it were simply improbable, we do not come 
anywhere near having that amount of evidence that is required to 
prove that Christ, who was dead, came to life again. But we will 
not multiply words on this point. We conclude that Christ really 
died, died as the Bible said he did, to save us from the penalty of 
our trai:i_:7- ; :-:i Eis resurrection had nothing to do with our 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 103 

salvation. That was only to prove him a god, for it would not 
answer to believe that one who was a god could fee brought to an 
everlasting and real, yea, an ignominious, death! 

HIS ASCENSION. 

That Christ should ascend into heaven, was for the Jewish 
mind a most natural thought. Enoch and Elijah had gone up before 
him, and probably Moses also. It was a natural consequence of the 
conception that Christ was divine. It was quite common in Roman 
and Grecian times for heroes to be thus taken up in a cloud. 

We cannot believe in the ascension any more than we could in 
the resurrection, and for about the same reason. Both are equally 
impossible, and both equally destitute of demonstrative evidence. 
It is impossible, we say, that one who lived as flesh and bones, died, 
was resurrected, and who lived again as before, should be able to be in 
heaven, where spirits only can subsist. How flesh and bones could 
ascend, without wings or any apparent means by which to overcome 
gravity, how it could travel upward, how it could endure a journey 
of perhaps thousands of years before it reached that remote place 
where this heaven is to be found, all these are things quite incom- 
prehensible to us. We venture to doubt that Christ ever did ascend 
in the manner assumed. 

He went upward! It is an old and obsolete idea, we all know, 
that people must go upward to get to heaven. Anybody knows 
now that we would get to heaven just as quick by going off hori- 
zontally to the east or west, as by going upward or downward. 
There is either some serious mistake about this account, or science 
itself is blind and uncertain. 

On what evidence must we believe that Christ ascended? On 
what evidence, rather, may we not believe that Christ never did 
ascend? It is remarkable that Matthew and John do not say 
anything about the ascension, and that in Mark and Luke, where it 
is mentioned, and where we should expect a careful and detailed 
account, all we have is that "he was received up into heaven and 
sat on the right hand of God," or "he was parted from them and 
carried up into heaven." Beyond this it is noticed in the Acts, but 
these are later writings, and here at least the account is evidently 
varnished. It is important also to bear in mind that the stories 
do not tally at all. They differ so much as to throw suspicion on the 
whole. So we are here, where we need the most conclusive 
evidence, destitute of every form or shadow of proof. All we have 
is a condensed statement of a belief more or less common, and very 
natural too, that Christ, who was a god, and who, after he had 



101 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

risen, appeared for a while but finally could not be found, bad 
really ascended into heaven as his final and appropriate resting 
place. 

CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIANS. 

The best exponents of Christ's doctrines, at the present day, are 
the Christian followers by whom our Savior is now represented. It 
is true, we may and often do mistake causes for effects. It may be 
in this case that men follow Christ because they are good, rather 
than become good by following Christ: yet it is certain that his 
teachings and his example do work an important change in the 
human heart. By turning our cares from the treasures of this 
world to that wealth which is more imperishable, we are removed 
from avarice and also from that selfishness which avarice generates. 
By teaching our dependence upon God, our pride is humbled, and 
self-sufficiency and conceit fast tend to disappear. TVe are taught 
to be charitable and kind, forgiving and abounding in love; we are 
taught to be just, to be fair, to be good; in a word, we are taught 
to shun all vices and to love all virtues, to follow Christ and obey God. 
Such are some of the distinguishing features in the life of the 
true Christian. As a sect it must be confessed that Christians com-, 
pare favorably with any other on the globe in all things that go to 
make human nature impressible, in all that makes the race' worthy 
and just, all that renders it faithful and devout. In all the virtues 
they are far in advance of the Jews, the Mahometans, the ancient 
Greeks and the Romans. 

Of Christian ministers we wish to take especial notice. They 
are by no means perfect: and though they are Christians, they are 
nevertheless but men. "With all their faults and their imperfections, 
they as a class do eminent credit to the whole human race. Taken 
in the aggregate, they are quite in advance of all other classes in 
the purity of their life, the sincerity of their motives, the excellence 
of their teachings, and their faithfulness in all that tends to render 
the character virtuous, devoted and proper. Xo class of men can 
compare with them in the extent of their sacrifices and the small- 
ness of their returns. They are men who often cast aside the 
brilliant prospects of a promising life, to labor in the cause of 
humanity, and to promote the welfare and salvation of the race to 
which they belong. 

TVe cannot say too much in their praise; we cannot pass too 
much to their credit. Let the errors of a few not be counted as the 
reproach of the whole. Dishonest and base men will creep into 
their number, as dishonest and base men will insinuate themselves 



THE NEW TESTAMENT. 105 

everywhere. Some are dishonest, some are unprincipled, some are 
bigoted, some are infatuated, some are unreasonable. All this we 
admit, but after all, where will you find less dross for the same 
amount of pure metal? No fair man will for a moment hold 
Christians responsible for the wrongs of an apostate few. But, we 
repeat it again, the Christian clergy in the aggregate are an honor 
to the race which they assume to teach and direct; they are in 
every respect the worthy followers of the Savior they represent. 

Still, I think our ministers are somewhat misguided. The same 
talent which they possess and the same earnest effort which they 
put forth, might, I suspect, in some cases, be put to far better uses. 
I believe in preaching, but not exactly in the kind of preaching we 
usually hear from the pulpit. It does not enliven the soul. It 
neither appeals to the understanding nor moves the obdurate heart. 
It may be good enough in itself, but it is not that kind of appeal which 
the age demands. Personally, I do not like the basis upon which 
they stand, nor the point of view from which their observations are 
taken. I do not like the spirit of the religion which they preach. I 

PROTEST AGAINST ALL RELIGION WHICH DOES NOT MAKE MEN BETTER, 
MORE HONEST, LESS SELFISH, IN SHORT, ANY RELIGION THAT DOES 
NOT MAKE THE POSSESSOR A HOLIER AND MORE RIGHTEOUS MAN. 

To teach men to repent simply to be saved, is to teach them to be 
selfish, and nothing more. I would teach men to repent that they 
may be elevated and improved, of more use to themselves, and of 
more benefit to the world. 

There is, it seems to me, too much of the selfish element in the 
appeal which the clergy make to us in order to induce us to embrace 
religion. They tell us to repent, that we may be saved, that we 
may rejoice hereafter. I would preach repentance, that we might 
become and remain better and nobler men ; that we might the better 
subserve the interests of humanity and perform those duties 
which we owe to the race. 

The religion of to day is a religion of pretense and show. It 
has little to do with the regenerating of the soul, or the regenerating 
of mankind. What a dreadful parody our churches are to-day on 
the teachings of the meek and lowly Jesus of eighteen hundred 
years ago! 

Let not religion be a reproach to those who profess it. Let 
Christians so live that the light of their countenances and the 
warmth of their hearts may compel men to believe in the truth of 
their doctrines and the power of the gospel. Let them show by 
their conduct and their intercourse with the world that they not 



106 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

only do not believe as other men, but that they live not and die not 
as other men. Xone save those who are really Christians should 
ever denominate themselves followers of Christ. Let our religion 
be a religion of progress. If it is not what it should be. if it is not 
doing for humanity what it may do, let us make it what it ought 
to be. 

In this one thing at least I hope not to be misunderstood: I 
believe in Christ, and in Christ only: I believe in the church. I 
believe in the gospel. I would not have a Bible less, a church less, 
a minister less, a prayer less, or a Christian less than we have. Xo, 
not one. But had I the power, I would throw into all of these a 
new life, a new vigor, a new purpose. I detest pomp and show; I 
detest parade and pretense: I love truth and sincerity; I love reason 
and humanity. I love the true Christian, because I love those 
who are not wrapped up in self, those who feel it to be their highest 
aim to be charitable and just, forbearing and true. 

I look upon the church and the doctrines of the church as the 
great lever which must in the end move mankind. It always has 
shaped the destinies of the world; it always will. The church 
must redeem mankind: the church must save the race. I have no 
sympathy with those who would destroy, or even weaken the 
church. No, the church is good. I only seek to make it better: I 
only seek to have it fulfill its true mission and accomplish its true 
ends. "We may have religion without morality, but not morality 
without religion. Persons who do not love and fear God, who do 
not feel that there is a great and good being who is over all and 
owns all; persons who do not feel that we belong to one common 
brotherhood, and are linked together by common ties and common 
obligations, cannot be very just, very kind, very devoted, very good. 

And after all we have said, what shall be our conclusion as to 
the use and value of Christianity? We are happy to give in our 
testimony, after a long life of experience in the ways and workings of 
this world, that Christianity is deserving of every man's attention, 
and its blessings are worth every man's effort to obtain. Xo man 
can live truly happy in this world without it. Christ has beyond 
all doubt taught us the true doctrine; he has set before us the only 
true example for enlightened and good men to follow. 

Men may be honest without being really Christians ; they may 
be charitable, but they cannot be truly good. Christianity gives 
the soft and tender tone to the heart which reason nor philosophy can 
never give. Christianity makes us at peace with ourselves, because 
we are at peace with all others. We live happy, feel happy, die 
happy, and in the end, we hope, are saved. 



BIBLE TOPICS! 



CHAPTER IV. 

GOD AND HIS CHARACTER. 

Who God is, what he is, and where he is, are questions we can 
not, and do not care to answer. It is impossible to give a satis- 
factory solution to any of these questions. We see God only in his 
works; beyond them God is to us an unfathomable mystery, an 
impenetrable darkness. 

But that there is a God, that there is a power which controls 
all, directs all, and is all, it is impossible for any intelligent person 
not to believe. Our impotence is plain enough; the impotence of 
all around us is still plainer. We are borne into this world without 
our knowledge, certainly without our effort; we are carried along 
with the current while living, and are brushed away as by a mere 
breath of air when finally we die. There is a power over us, there 
is a power within us, there is a power beyond us, and that power 
is God. 

I do believe in God, I avow it. I do believe in a power that is 
universal and everlasting, one that has never ceased to act, and one 
that assuredly never will cease to act. Infidels call this principle 
destiny, fate. That is only their view of God. Others embody 
him in shape, and address him as a thinking, reasoning, sympathiz- 
ing mortal. That is only their view of God. But both extremes 
must bow to God as the author of all things, and the preserver of 
all creatures. Our conceptions of him will not alter his character, 
neither will they remove from us our obligations to reverence and 
adore him. 

While I do not fashion God to my own mind as some created 
being, some monster, I still look up to him as the embodiment of 
reason, justice, and wisdom. He rules this world as a reasoning, 
just, and wise person would, and I can very easily appreciate how 
and why the very best of minds conceive him as such. 



108 BIBLE TOPICS. 

God is in nature. He pervades nature in all its forms, in all its 
parts. He is nothing apart from nature; he is in no sense inde- 
pendent of it, no more at least than the mind or soul is independent 
of the body. He is an attribute, and an attribute can have no 
separate existence. I believe in the reality of God and the infinitude 
of his power, just as much as those do who give him a monstrous 
form, assign to him a monstrous state of existence and fix him finally 
in some monstrous place of abode. I do not look upon him as a 
man, and so I cannot conceive that he has the weaknesses and 
shortcomings of a man. He has none of man's passions, none of 
man's vices. He is inflexible, and hence is just. He is always one 
and the same, ever unchangeable, always reasonable, always right. 
God has no sense, and hence has no feeling. The terms merciful 
and kind cannot properly apply to him. For us to be merciful we 
must feel. Kindness implies favor, and favor implies partiality and 
consequent injustice. Would we say the sun was kind, would we 
say the earth was kind, or that water or air was kind? No. Neither 
is God kind. 

I fear God just as I fear the winds and the storms. I fear him 
as a being whom nothing can control, nothing can divert, nothing 
can appease; a being who is good and just, not at one time, but at 
all times, not to one man but to all men, under all circumstances and 
in all places. I love and adore nature which feeds and clothes me, 
adds to my enjoyments and ministers to my wants. So, and not 
otherwise, do I adore God. 

This power of God was established from the beginning. All 
things conspire to carry out the common plan. As far back as 
thought can carry us, all things are found to be pre-arranged, fore- 
ordered. God is not an intelligence continually working, continually 
active, but simply that which gave the first impulse to created 
things. God is Law. He cannot even himself depart from the pre- 
scribed order, the established plan. 

PROVIDENCE. 

God never departs from a line once taken, from an order once 
given. It is hardly necessary to say that I do not believe in 
special providences, in real miracles, or in any irregularities what- 
ever. I believe that the laws of nature are supreme and cannot be 
annulled. Things may appear monstrous and miraculous to us, 
which to wiser beings would be perfectly plain and intelligible. 

To regard God as provident, as having a care for things, is to 
regard him as a finite being, a being subject to all the embarrass- 
ments, weaknesses and vicissitudes of short-sighted and feeble 



BIBLE 10PICS. 109 

creatures. God as providence becomes a mere man. If he cares 
for some, he must neglect others. If he showed special favors to 
some, he would be an unjust God, he would be, what the Bible 
declares him not to be, a respecter of persons. 

I believe in a God that provides for all equally and alike. I 
believe that he has laid down certain universal conditions, and those 
must be obeyed or the penalty suffered. Of course this makes no 
Providence of God. 

But here is a serious question : Are there not some things in this 
world that happen without God's carg and attention? Does he sit 
down and exert himself every time an acorn is put in the ground 
to grow? Does he remain till it becomes a tree, and even till the 
tree falls to the ground? Do you really believe that not a sparrow 
falls without his notice? Do you not rather believe that not a 
sparrow falls with his notice? Is not the force of gravity of itself 
sufficient to bring the sparrow down without God's help? When 
the mechanic builds an engine and puts water in the boiler and the 
fire under it, does it not regularly do its work without the slightest 
care or interposition on the part of the maker? All nature is God's 
machinery, doing its work continually and without deviation, 
because of the active principle within and the perfect adaption of 
every part to all the others. Just as much as the contriver is present 
with his machines whenever and wherever they work, just so much 
is God present with this world, and not otherwise. 

It must be observed, finally, that the idea of providence is 
founded on the supremest selfishness. Providence, special interpo- 
sition to save one, often at the expense of another, from the just 
demands of nature's laws, is not accorded to all beings nor to all 
things. It is not accorded to any of the highest order of animals 
not human. Who ever 'heard of an elephant, or a lion, or an eagle, 
noble creatures of the forest or the skies, being saved from their 
impending fate, the plunge of a spear for instance? No, animals 
have nothing but their mere wits, their strength, their limbs, to save 
them from destruction. Here is where reason and religion oppose 
each other. Reason says that the merest insect is of as much worth 
to God as the noblest man, but religion affirms that man is of 
supreme value, and that all other creatures are worthless. 

THE SOUL. 

The soul is such an invisible and untangible essence that our 
ideas of it must from the very nature of the case be the merest mat- 
ter of speculation. No one has ever seen the soul, no one is sure 



110 BIBLE TOPICS. 

that such a thing as the soul exists. People have their own ideas 
of it, and no two of them are alike. All but one of them must be 
wrong. 

We can get some idea of the original meaning of soul by con- 
sidering the meaning of the word. In Latin animus, French ame, 
Greek (memos (wind), means soul, spirit, breath; while Latin anima, 
the feminine form of animus, means life. So our spirit is simply 
breath ; and the Semitic ruck, Slavic duck, has a similar application. 
And the word ghost, German glieist, is merely gas, that is, vapor or 
wind. All these things show that mankind conceive the soul to be 
merely life, as life again is simply breath; and the departure of the 
soul from the body is identical with the departure of the breath of 
life. So expire is to breathe out, to give up the ghost (breath), to 
die; while inspire is to breathe in, inspirit, to bring to life, to cause 
to live. 

The prevailing ideas of the nature of the soul must be more or 
less erroneous. The soul is believed to have all the qualities of sub- 
stances, as durability and extent, and yet it is claimed that it is no 
substance. Where does the soul reside? If all over the body, a 
part of it must be lost when the arm is amputated. Where does the 
soul come from when it comes, whither does it go when it departs ? 
On what does it subsist? What gender is the soul? What shape 
does it have? What are its limits? Does it go upward when it 
leaves the body, according to the current opinion, and if so, why 
upward ? All these are pertinent questions which never have been 
answered, and never can be. 

The soul develops with the body; it decays with the body. It 
is feeble in infancy; it is depressed and forceless in extreme old age. 
Before birth it was a valueless quantity; after death it is neither 
more nor less. Still we cannot in either case deny its existence. 

No time can be named when the soul entered the body; no time 
can be named when it leaves it. We have no more right to say it 
enters the body at birth than two months before birth. We cannot 
say it leaves the body when it dies, for the death of the body is not 
the matter of a moment of time, but of regular and continued 
gradations. 

IMMORTALITY. 

It may be as well for me to remark in the beginning that I do 
not believe in the existence of a soul or mind independent of the 
body, and hence capable of existing before it or after it, or without 
it. I do believe in such a thing as mind or soul, but only as an 
attribute of the body. Is there any quality, that of sweetness for 



BIBLE TOPICS. Ill 

instance, that could exist after the body to which it belonged, the 
apple we will say, has ceased to exist? The destruction of the body, 
all know, carries with it the destruction of all its qualities. Is mind 
or soul anything more than an attribute of a living body ? 

Mind is either feeling or is entirely dependent upon feeling 
for its action. Then how shall the mind act when we cannot feel ? 
We know the mind does not act when we do not feel. Thoughts 
come to us only on condition that we are impressed by the things 
that surround us. ' Hence there is no mind, or no action of the mind, 
without feeling. 

But a mind that does not act is no mind at all. Then can there 
be a mind, or soul, after death ? A mind after the body is dissolved 
into dust, when there is no brain, no nerves, no heart, nothing! 
Through what medium would it act, by what power would it be set 
in motion? As we know the mind, it can only act, or even exist, 
on condition that there is a body; and the nature of its action 
depends upon the condition of the body. The mind develops with 
the body, it declines with the body, it keeps even pace with the 
body in every respect, then why should it not also die with the body? 

It will be noticed I have used the term mind in its broad sense, 
as being something more than mere intelligence and will, and as 
embracing in its meaning what, for some people, would be included 
under the word soul. But it is useless to dwell upon the shades of 
meaning in words. What I have termed mind, I am willing that 
others shall call soul. My remarks are directed to the conscious, 
thinking, acting principle of man, call it what you like. 

We hear much about the immortality of the soul, but I charge 
here that those who talk of the immortality of the soul, have in 
mind simply the immortality of the body, though this body is, in 
their minds, I know a very light, thin and vapory thing. But it is 
a body, and has the form and appearance of a body. They only call 
it the soul. 

And there is some sound philosophy, some real truth in this. 
There is, it truly seems, a force within us leading us to believe that 
that which is once born and has come into life, can never cease to 
exist; that as its whole life is a series of successive .changes, no 
doubt death also with its attendant dissolution, is only another one 
of these changes. I do indeed believe in the imortality, that is, the 
indestructibility, of the body. 

I believe, moreover, that this immortality extends backwards 
as well as forwards. In fact, I would use immortality before birth 
to prove immortality after death. As I do not believe that death is 



112 BIBLE TOPICS. 

the end of existence, so I do not believe that birth is the beginning 
of it. We are accustomed to date the existence of a person from 
the day he was born. Yet we know that his existence began some 
months before that — may we not say years and centuries before 
that? Take the little grain of wheat. Will you date its existence 
from the time when you first caught it resting in its little cradle on 
the ear? You can trace back its growth to the time when it was 
smaller. Going back still further, you find it soft, pulpy, and 
further back yet, till you lose sight of it entirely.. But does it then 
cease to exist? Do you not know that there are thousands of things 
so imperfect, so ill-defined, so small, that you cannot see them with 
your eye, but which, with a penetration a thousand times greater, 
you know could easily be discerned? The little bud comes out 
upon the branch and spreads out into a glorious bundle of foliage. 
You follow it back, you come to a point where it was the minutest 
prominence on the bark, a speck so small that you could hardly 
detect it. And would you boldly proclaim that even that speck 
was the beginning of its existence? So we ma} r take the origin of 
any event, we will say the American Revolution. What was its 
cause, or when did it begin? We might go back in this inquiry 
from one thing to another till we were lost in eternity. It was, you 
may say, the stamp act, but what was the cause of that act, and the 
cause of that cause, and so on to infinity? So we observe, nothing 
begins to exist, begins to be. It only begins to be seen, that is all. 
All there is in the birth of a thing is that it has come to be visible. 
Conception is one stage of birth, but it is by no means the first 
stage. 

But if the creature itself existed so long, so very long, before 
it became apparent to us through any of our senses, must not also 
its soul have existed with it ? Must it not have passed with the 
body through all its anterior stages of existence, as it does through 
all its various eras of visible worldly existence? 

And if the soul was with the body from the beginning, shall it 
not cling to it unto the end? If it was with the body in its anterior 
existence, will it not accompany it through its periods of future 
existence also? Or would you deny that the body has an existence 
and stages to pass through after what we call death takes place? 
We shall undertake to show under another heading, Death, that 
death is the work of slow degrees, that man, as he tends to the 
grave, is dying every day, that what we call death is properly 
only one of the stages or steps of death real, a scene in the drama, 
but by no means the last one. 

As the body existed long before there were any evidences of 
sensation or any signs of motion, a long while before it had any 



BIBLE TOPICS. US 

other existence than a mere vegetative one, so we know the body 
exists long after sensation is lost, and after every power of motion 
is lost with it. We know many instances, as in drowning, fainting 
and fits of various kinds, where all the powers of life are tempora- 
rily suspended and the body is really dead, and yet no one claims 
that the soul has departed or the body ceased to exist. 

We know that not a particle of matter that is new is brought 
into existence, and none that is old is ever lost. The body is merely 
a mass, organized though it be, but nevertheless merely a mass, an 
accumulation of earth, of fluids, of gases. Not one particle of this 
body is ever lost, ever annihilated. But if this be true, how can 
the body ever be said to be destroyed? We cut down the living 
tree, we burn it, and in the end it disappears, a part lost here and 
another there. Modern science teaches that the whole is saved, 
not an atom is lost. The change is only that of form. Those 
particles, those ashes, those fluids, those gases, all came from 
surrounding nature. In their decay and destruction they are only 
returned to nature again. 

A company of men disband. We consider it annihilated, but 
how little of the company really is lost. The individuals really 
exist precisely as before, just as absolutely, just as naturally, and 
practically. So the particles of a body after death are only disbanded. 
We must observe too that the company after dissolution, even as 
before its organization, is a force of so many men, acting, it is true, 
not in such close proximity as before, but nevertheless acting, and 
hence existing. It is well known that every body, every power, 
leaves its photographic impression on all nature around, and existing 
thus continually in its effects, may again be said to never die. 

It is not at all strange that men should, as they have in all 
places and in all ages, believe in immortality. There is a founda- 
tion for this belief in the very nature of things. The proofs that 
science adds every day strengthen this belief. We know that 
nothing is lost, either of force or of matter. Things appear to-day, 
but we know they have existed from eternity. They are merely 
passing by. The storm that sweeps over us has traveled thousands 
of miles, and many hours have been consumed, in reaching us. 
Every force that is developed to our senses, originated in and is 
backed up by some other force. We never see the beginning or the 
end of any development, any event, any movement. We catch a 
glimpse of one of its phases as it glides by, and that is all. 

We never cease to exist. The flesh of our body, which repre- 
sents us, is not in any actual sense our own self. So little is this 
flesh ourself that we may lose a portion of it and still remain as 
before, ourself. 



114 BIBLE TOPICS. 

I never began to exist* I date from the beginning of creation. 
I am as old as God himself; there is nothing in nature older than I. 
This life, this body, is only one phase of my existence. Take an 
event as our best illustration, the war of the Rebellion, for instance 
When did that begin? When the first gun was fired on Sumpter? 
No, that was only one step, a step which had been preceded by a 
series of aggressive steps for thirty years or more. The elements 
of antagonism between the North and South began with the creation 
of the world. 

RESURRECTION. 

Nothing is clearer to my mind than that when people talk about 
the soul, they only have another body in view. A soul, a mere 
spirit, a vapor, a nothing, could have no such enjoyments, no such 
sufferings, as we speak of. How can anything but a body feel? 
How can anything but a body think? Without feeling there can be 
no perception, no knowledge. Can a spirit feel? We can under- 
stand how the eye can see and the ear hear, but not how seeing 
itself may see, or hearing itself may hear — especially after the 
organs themselves are lost. 

But we will understand better what kind of a soul people have 
in their minds when they talk about it, by considering the matter of 
the resurrection. What kind of a resurrection did Christ speak 
of, what kind of a resurrection did he furnish us an example of in 
his own death and ascension, to say nothing of the prophets of the 
Old Testament who went to heaven body and soul together? Cer- 
tainly it was the resurrection of the body. Even Christ's body was 
not a mere slough or shell to be cast aside as worthless. No, he 
was very careful to take it with him in his ascent into heaven. The 
people of Christ's day well understood that if the Lord's body did 
not go up, there would be no going up about it. The ascent of a 
soul without a body is simply an impossible and an absurd thing. 

Job says, (xix:26,) "And though after my skin worms destroy 
this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." And the whole Bible, 
the New Testament as well as the Old, wherever the subject is 
referred to, implies that the dead are to be raised with their bodies. 
And really we could not speak of the raising of the soul, for when 
the body dies the soul departs. It is never buried and so is never 
raised. 

Some have gone so far as to assume that the particles of our 
bodies, scattered abroad as they must be, are to be collected together, 
in some mysterious way, of course, at the final day of judgment. 
But here is a little impossibility to get over. Those very particles 



BIBLE 10PICS. 115 

may have become an element in a thousand other beings. How 
shall they all appear where they belong at the great judgment day? 
Again, does nature .anywhere, in any possible shape, give us- 
an example of a resurrection parallel with that of a body after 
dissolution has taken place? The metamorphoses of insects have 
been supposed to afford an example. But those metamorphoses as 
now understood, do not involve a case of death. There is a series 
of developments, but the chain of continued existence is not broken 
for one moment. There is no death for the worm, consequently no 
resurrection. 

DEATH. 

We may say with as much truth as we say anything, that we 
can trace our existence back so far that we may be permitted to say 
we have existed from eternity. We are justified in this assertion 
principally by the fact that no one can find or can name the day, or 
the hour, or the minute from which we began to be, and before 
which we did not exist. 

On the other hand, if no one can tell us when we began to 
exist, no one can tell us the moment when we cease to exist. It is 
commonly understood that we cease to exist when we die. But 
that is the great question : When do we die ? Do we ever die as we 
consider it? Do we not always die, as we should consider it? 

We believe in the immortality of the soul, because among other 
reasons, we do not comprehend the true nature of death. We are 
taught that the soul leaves the body when the body dies. Now, the 
soul is a single, individual thing, inseparable into parts, and existing 
only in its unity; when it departs, it must do so instantaneously, 
and not by degrees, as if it were an assemblage of individuals. But 
the death of the body, as is well known by scientific men, is not the 
work of an instant, but of degrees, the result of slow, steady and 
successive processes. 

" It is the heart which ceases to act first," says Bichat, "it is 
this whose death draws with it successively the death of other 
organs." "Behold the man," says the same authority, "who is 
extinct of a long old age; he dies in detail; his exterior functions 
come to an end one after the other; all the senses cease their action 
successively — the ordinary causes of sensation pass over them 
without affecting them. The sight is obscured, is troubled, and 
finally ceases to transmit the images of objects; it is senile blindness; 
all the organs depending on the skin are enfeebled and die; the hair, 
the beard whiten; odors give to the nose a feeble impression." 

"But organic life remain to the old man even after the total 
loss of his animal life; the digestive juices still dissolve in the 



116 BIBLE TOPICS. 

stomach the food which is found there. Nutrition is still manifest 
in the hair and nails. It would be so without doubt in all other 
parts as it is with the secretions, if we could observe the insensible 
movements from which these two functions result." 

The different parts of the body not only do not die together, 
they were not born together, that is, they did not come into actual 
and visible existence at the same time; the heart, the lungs, the 
stomach, the liver, are not organs of the same age. This puts us 
in mind of calling attention to the following important and pertinent 
question: As the different parts of the body come into existence 
successively, and as they cease to live and act also by successive 
operations, at what time may we say the soul takes possession of 
the body, and when does it leave the body? But no one claims that 
the soul enters the body by pieces, by parts; no one claims, so far 
as I know, that the soul ever enters the body at all. 

Assuming that the soul is born with the body, that is, is coex- 
istent with it, and cannot separate itself from it, why have we a 
right to assume in addition, that there ever is a moment when the 
soul, like the bird from its nest, may take wings and leave its earthlv 
tenement forever ; or claim that there is a moment when the body 
can exist without the soul and the soul without the body? Is the 
human body when brought to death at all different from a clock 
that is run down, or an engine whose wheels have become clogged 
or lack the moving power of wind or water? The seed that keeps 
its living principle hundreds, nay thousands of years, does it not 
have a sleeping soul? In all these cases, does not the moving- 
principle, the soul, remain as before, only that it is dormant? No 
one would dare to say in these cases that the soul had departed. Is 
the body aught but a machine, played upon and moved by forces 
externally and internally applied, just as is the case with every 
other machine? The parallel is perfect, only the living body, 
brought to death, is far more perishable than the machine which is 
made with human hands. It is not so easily repaired; if we could 
place the lost lung in the body otherwise sound, the subject would 
still live. The seed that lies in the granary a hundred years is dead, 
and only comes to life by the stimulating principles of heat and the 
soil. Where was its soul all this while? If a body, healthy and 
sound, could be preserved from decay, it would never really die ; 
we should have a case merely of suspended animation, as we have 
in the case of animals who sleep in winter. 

But to return to the death of organs successively. These 
organs are really separate and distinct individuals. The living 
creature is a mere organized mass of subordinate living beings, as 



BIBLE TOPICS. 117 

the brain, the heart, the hands, the head, the feet. This position is 
proved by a recurrence to the lower order of animals, and more 
particularly to the vegetable. No one doubts, that the tree is a 
simple assemblage of distinct individualities, as the leaves and the 
branches, each one of which is capable, under certain conditions, 
when severed from the parent stem, of taking on itself an inde- 
pendent existence. Nay, even the roots may grow and become a 
complete tree. But it is not only true with the plant, that we may 
cut off the branch, or even the leaf, and have it grow and itself 
become a new and independent plant, but also in the lowest orders 
of animated existences, parts may be cut off, the whole animal may 
even be cut up into innumerable sections, and each become another 
and complete animal. In the higher order of animals, this process 
is not practicable. But still, many of the parts of the living body, 
as the brain, the arm, the leg, may be removed, and the animal still 
continue its existence, and even in some cases supply the place of 
the absent member by a new growth — showing that what remains,, 
however small it may be, is still complete and entire in itself. 

Now I ask: Are there as many souls, as there are organs or 
members? When a part is lost, when it dies, does one soul die also,, 
or does a fragment only of the great soul take its departure ? That 
is the great and important question which those who defend the 
immortality of the soul must yet answer for us and themselves. 

I might add farther in this connection, that any number of 
living beings collected together, as a company, a herd, an army or a 
nation, is a living being, just like a tree or a polype. But all the 
life that we find there is in the individuals which go to make up the 
organization. So it is with the single individual being, the life and 
substance is in the ultimate elements. Every collection of living 
beings, every collection of bodies, is a being having individuality, 
and hence a soul and mind. The whole human race is but one 
great organized being. Every living being is a mere aggregate of 
other living beings. The microscope has revealed the fact that all 
our fluids at least are actually alive with living creatures. What 
are we then ourselves but a small world of living beings, animated 
and directed by one common mind? Perhaps, nay, probably, there 
is no dead matter as we understand it. Every organ about us is 
itself an individual and separate being, just as much as we are. It 
is not independent or self-existent, neither are we. 

The power of external force to give life to the body is shown 
by the use of galvanic electricity to revive, though temporarily, the 
dead. By its application the body moves, writhes, twists and 



118 BIBLE TOPICS. 

starts as if in the agonies of pain and despair. All this proves that 
the body does not move because of any soul distinct from the body. 
We consider motion in the body as an evidence of will and as a 
proof of a soul. But these experiments prove that these movements 
may appear when the soul has departed. 

But as it is a mistaken idea that the body dies when it ceases to 
breathe, so it is equally a mistake that the soul takes its departure 
at the same time. Persons in a trance, where every part of the 
machinery of the body has long since ceased to act, as in some 
kinds of fits, and in cases of temporary drowning, or freezing, or 
some violent concussion, may aid us in forming some idea of the 
true nature of death. The body in these cases is as truly dead, the 
breath and life have as truly departed, as they ever do. But as we 
say in this case, the living principle, or life, is suspended in its 
action, so we may say when the body dies and is never revived and 
brought into action again, the suspended animation has simply 
become permanent. 

Then, also, we are to observe that this life, this living and 
breathing, as produced by external influences, being mechanical, 
and not in its nature more inherent in the body than it is for the 
clock to go or the wheel to turn. When the body dies temporarily, 
or when we have suspended animation, how is it revived and how 
is the soul brought back? By friction, by rubbing, by rolling, and 
other operations which are purely mechanical and external. 

THE SOUL OF ANIMALS. 

If it is right to consider the soul as identical with mind, with 
the principle of thought and feeling, we must then claim besides 
that the soul cannot be appropriated as a gift belonging exclusively 
to man. Other animals think, reflect, feel and have consciousness ; 
hence other animals must have souls the same as man. This is pre- 
cisely what science teaches. The doctrine that man is an anomalous 
creature, that he possesses powers and privileges not accorded to 
brutes, that he is the sovereign of creation, that he is all and every- 
thing else is nothing, is merely the vain presumption of an ignorant 
people in an ignorant age. Evey step that science advances proves 
beyond question that man is an animal and no more ; that he is made 
after the same image as the animal; that the qualities he possesses 
differ in degree but not in kind from those of the lowest animals. 
Every step that science takes relieves man of that shining and 
glorious crown which Genesis, and the world since Genesis, has 
endeavored to hold upon his head. 



BIBLE TOPICS. 119 

The likeness between the bodies of men and brutes cannot be 
disputed for a moment. Those bodies are machines made after 
patterns similar to our own. Are they not worked also upon pre- 
cisely the same principles? Men, like animals, must eat and drink, 
labor and rest, fear and retreat, hesitate and consider, choose and 
act, in short, must do everything in their lives which animals do, 
and in the end, like animals, they must turn to the dust and disap- 
pear forever. Being similar machines, fitted for similar offices, and 
coming to similar ends, why must we not expect them to be guided, 
moved and managed by similar powers? Man is moved by the 
mind ; why does not the mind move the dog, the horse, and the ant ? 
And as the mind implies intelligence and a soul, why are not 
animals to be credited with a soul like man? 

But we must observe farther, that the intelligence of animals is 
not by any means so mean and rudimentary as the less informed are 
apt to suppose. The lowest brute does all that man does ; like man, 
he reasons, reflects, chooses and decides. We have only to refer to 
the many curious and instructive things which are known to be 
done by animals, to the herds of wild horses which follow implicitly 
the direction of their leader, to apes and birds who station one of 
their number as a guard to prevent them from being surprised in 
the act of their robbery. Any person who has seen the conduct of 
animals, their manner of bringing about results, and how they 
provide for contingencies, can certainly relate instances enough of 
intelligent and sensible action. 

Animals have memory, judgment and imagination. They not 
only have arts which are born to them, but others which they 
acquire by study and observation. T\~e might allow our thoughts 
to recur to the teaching which the old bird gives to its young in the 
art of flying. . How carefully it provides for the nest till the young 
have grown up, and how regularly this provision is withheld after 
that, unless they are prevented from leaving the nest by some acci- 
dent or design, as by the clipping of the wings, when the young are 
cared for as before. So we might refer to the cunning of beasts 
and birds of prey in the steps they take to escape detection and 
punishment, and observe how wily and artful they are; and to 
very many other facts in the history of animals which illustrate the 
same general truth. 

The admirers of man have tried in vain to find some one quality, 
some little mark by which the body of a brute might be placed in 
opposition to the body of a , human being. Men do indeed differ 
very materially from brutes, even from the highest and the best of 
them. But so do men differ from women, children and infants 



120 BIBLE TOPICS. 

from adults, the wild savage who feeds upon berries and bark from 
the polished citizen who lives in a fine house, and who warms and 
decorates himself with beautiful clothing and rare jewels. Never- 
theless, we say that all these are equally and undeniably human 
beings, possessing like qualities and being alike heirs to the same 
inheritance as ourselves. 

So we see it is not the amount of intelligence which decides 
the fate of the one who is a candidate for a place in the ranks of 
these august creatures, but the question is rather whether he has. 
any intelligence at all. But has not the elephant, the lion, the horse, 
the dog, and the bee, intelligence as well as man? They may not 
have an order of intelligence as high as that of man, just as one 
man may have an order of intelligence not as high as some others 
have, and still he may be a man after all. 

There is, we repeat, no difference in the mould after which the 
bodies of men and those of the lower animals are made. But scien- 
tific persons adhering to the doctrines of the Old Testament, while 
they are forced to leave this stronghold of theirs, still, as a last 
resort, cling to the idea that mentally man and the brute are not to 
be compared with each other, affecting to believe that man has a 
mind and a soul, and the brute has not. But I claim that this con- 
clusion is the result of misconceptions, and of a want of accurate 
and reliable information. 

Man is thus set apart from the inferior animals on the ground 
of the supremacy of his intellect, and yet the idiot, and the infant 
too, long before it can think and act, long before it can reflect or 
have any appreciable consciousness, is placed in the rank of men, 
and allowed to inherit that anomalous and mysterious possession, 
the soul! 

Men delight to dwell, in speaking of animals, upon what they 
triumphantly assume to be their inability to learn, their want of 
capacity for improvement. But if they should examine the case 
more carefully, they would undoubtedly here find themselves mis- 
taken, as they have in so many instances before. We have taken 
here, as usual, bare assumption for absolute demonstration. When 
in a few stray instances we have undertaken to teach an animal, we 
have done it with a very poor grace, since we have had no faith in 
the work. Xo one can conjecture how much may }*et be done for 
the poor animal (just as there has been done for the poor African, 
or the blind and the dumb man), when we can once make ourselves 
understood by them. We must observe also and remember that 
man in his rude and wild state makes no improvement, no advance- 



BIBLE TOPICS. 121 

ment. He too must be taught before he can rise. He must come 
in contact with superior beings and be warmed by them into a 
new life. 

Finally, when we compare men and animals, in trying to con- 
nect the two parts of the chain, let us be careful to put together the 
two parts that belong together in the connection, the highest of 
animals with the lowest of men. If we do this we shall find the 
difference not quite so striking as we might at first be led to suppose. 
The difference in the appearance, character and habits of the wild 
savages of Southern Africa or the slaves of Borneo and Sumatra, 
and that of the higher classes of apes, or even other animals, is not 
so great as we might have been led to imagine. 

I feel that there is is no valid reason why animals should be 
denied the credit of having souls, nor why they should not be enti- 
tled to all the privileges and prerogatives belonging to man,, 
especially that one greatest of all, the privilege of living after 
death. Who can give one single reason, save preconceived notions 
and long established prejudice, why man should live on to eternity, 
man, even the most degraded and the weakest of the class, while 
the noble horse, or the lion, or the eagle, is annihilated from the 
very moment of death? Animals are born like men, they live as 
men, and as men they die. Who can give one single reason for the 
belief that one is lose for all time and the other saved for eternity? 
We answer, no one. 

It is then presuming and selfish in the extreme for us to imagine 
a creator and a savior who only remember us, while they leave all 
other living beings to death and irretrievable ruin. It will do very 
well for us to make such pretensions for the world to come, about 
which all must be uncertainty and speculation, but when we come 
to this present world, where the evidence is full and decisive, we 
find that God is just as careful to preserve the worm as the hero or 
philosopher; that the worm is just as wonderfully made; that it 
is protected by the same laws and guided by an intelligence similar 
to that of man in his highest estate. 

I really believe that animals are not only born and live like us, 
but that when they die they have just as much of an inheritance 
awaiting them as we have. Nay, I would go still farther; so far as 
immortality is concerned, I would include the vegetable and all that 
has life. I believe that if man lives after death, after his dissolution 
into dust, so does the animal and the plant. Believing as I do that 
the animal and the vegetable are to be taken into consideration in 
forming our ideas of our destiny after death, I think the}' may 
throw some light upon the great question of the immortality of 
the soul. 



128 BIBLE TOPIC'-. 

THE FUTURE STATE. 

With what has already been said on the Soul, on Immortality, 
on Death, on the Soul of Animals, we are now prepared to consider 
the Future State of Man. 

Man lives after death, but not his soul, not his conscious:: r — 
3Ian lives in the impressions he has made and the effects he has left. 
With them he goes to eternity. He lives in the race that survives 
him. He lives with the world itself. He lives in his recollections. 
A nan that is torn cannot die. What single act do I do in all my 
life that does not enter as an element into my nature and remain 
there to eternity? I build a house. I write a book, I utter a word. 
Is it ever lost"? Does it not vibrate on and on forever? The house. 
or the book, or the word, may in the end disappear, but will it not 
also leave its impression ? Tell me not I am nothing after death. 
My body may perish, but I shall live forever: It is the drone only, 
the man who does nothing, who really dies when the breath leaves 
him. Every man survives in his works, and the more he works the 
more he gun/toes. But literal immortality, literal resurrection and 
continuance of life, that I believe impossible and monstrous. That 
is merely a dream of the ancients, a wild vision of the unlettered 
world. 

Consciousness is born and developed with the body, it decays 
with the body. Without consciousness, without feeling, without 
thought, there can be no literal immortality, no surviving of the 
soul. Sentiment and feeling must lead to action, they are given 
solely to produce action. But how could there be action where 
there is no body I As well talk of the impression on a gold dollar 
ftei the coin itself had been dissolved in acid. 

A spirit cannot feel, or think, or act, or reflect. "Why, a spirit 
itself is a foolish absurdity, proper enough for old women and 
children to talk about, but not worth the breath of grown up and 
:~ible people. There is not half as much evidence to establish 
the existence of a spirit separate from the body, as there is to pr 
that the lunar spots are a veritable "man in the moon. v 

It is curious to see that everybody admits that he knows not 
the first thing about spirits or souls, or of devils or gods, or of 
heaven or hell, and yet people will talk of them as if they knew 
all about them. How much poor engraving has been wasted on 
devils and dragons, angels and demons ! The devil, for instance, 
how variously has he been represented ! With a tail and without 
one. with horns and hoofs and without them, as a handsome and as 
a hideous man, as a roaring lion and as a ravins: maniac '. But the 



BIBLE TOPICS. 123 

devil is now pretty well done for. He is now only a spirit, soon he 
will be gone entirely, and with him all spirits, and witches, and 
ghosts, and angels, and demons, and dragons, and such like. 

I am sorry to dispel that beautiful and consoling thought that 
we shall meet our friends in heaven, but it is the bare truth: I do 
not believe a word of such doctrine. Death, I repeat, if it really 
destroys nothing else, destroys consciousness. That no one doubts, 
no one denies. But if I am not conscious, how shall I know, how 
shall I think, how shall I feel? No, it is impossible to make me 
believe that after a man dies he is still not dead; that when he is 
putrified, when he is scattered as dust before the winds, he still 
feels and knows, suffers and enjoys! The thought of life after 
death is a beautiful one, but it is a childish fancy, the most reasonless 
of all absurd conceptions. 

It is clear enough that I do not believe in a heaven and a hell, 
and a world to come, such as Christian people tell about. I do not 
believe in a world that God keeps waiting for us, outside of and 
away from everything else. "What is now always was and always 
will be, and there is not and cannot be, at any time, anything beyond 
it. All I know about is this world, this life, this universe, this man, 
and that is enough for me. 

But if there is no world to come, if there are no future rewards 
and punishments, how shall men be kept in subjection? I answer, 
just as they are now.. It is the laws of society and the regard for 
public opinion that govern us, not the hope of reward or fear of 
punishment hereafter. What do men care whether God sees them 
or not? They know little about God and care less. People talk 
much about God, and heaven, and hell, and the devil, and the like, 
but they are empty words for them. They mean absolutely nothing 
in practice. 

But there is an immortality to live for : Men do live after death. 
They leave an impress behind, an influence for good or ill. The 
worst of men, I notice, are careful about the memory they leave to 
posterity. Every man desires to be thought well of after death. 
Every man desires to be loved and esteemed, even after the breath 
has departed from his body and after the praises of mankind are 
inaudible to his ears. So a wise man, a thoughtful man, a good 
man, does live chiefly for immortality. The rewards of the present 
are entirely incommensurate with the efforts he puts forth. What 
people now think of him, he cares not so much as what will poster- 
ity, what will God think of him when he dies? These are the 
questions he asks. What nobler, higher, better incentive to worthy 



<W 



124 BIBLE TOPICS. 

action than this? Tam making history every day. The press, the 
telegraph and the people are recording this, item by item, and pass- 
ing judgment upon it. I cannot feel unconcerned while I know all 
this is being done. 

Men will be punished for their sins and rewarded for their good 
deeds hereafter, but not in the gross physical sense which is gener- 
ally conceived. Men will not boil, and hiss, and hop, and howl, 
while the devil is stirring them up with a sharp stick and making 
the brimstone burn fiercer than ever. It is generally conceded now, 
even among devout people, that this fiery furnace business is a tall 
joke, good to frighten foolish people with, but good for little else. 
But it does not frighten people now, because the joke is too old, and 
people don't believe a word of it. So the happiness to come, the 
crown of gold, the gates of pearl, are all counted for what they are, 
a beautiful dream, a baseless fancy. People now look for some 
other kind of reward than that. 

PREDESTINATION. 

Were I asked if I thought all things were predestined, I would 
say yes. But as we never know what an order is, it is a matter of 
no concern to us whether things are predestined or not. It is simply 
for us to work, to do our best towards accomplishing our ends, and 
then await the result. Men make efforts every day and fail; men 
make efforts every day and succeed. If we made no effort we 
should certainly fail; if we made the experiment, we might possibly 
succeed. So the only alternative we have is to work, using those 
powers and exercising those faculties which a kind Providence has 
given us. 

Remember, the efforts we make are themselves a part of what 
is foreordained. So it is not for us to lay down our oars and allow 
ourselves to drift over the precipice. We must go to work as if 
there were no predestination in the world. And yet this conscious- 
ness of predestination often gives us courage, gives us hope. It 
seems unavoidable that we must concede predestination, for we see 
things happen every day against our art and against our effort, 
things that could not be avoided by using ever so much skill. Are 
they then not predestined? As we are blind in the matter, we must 
work. We see things happen one way to-day without our interpo- 
sition that would have happened very differently with it. 

For all practical purposes man is a free agent. We cannot 
turn aside a single one of God's purposes and plans, and yet we 
know that it is a part of his order that we shall add our share to the 
final accomplishment of his ends. In doing so we are merely fol- 
lowing the impulse of our nature, and affording in ourselves an 
illustration of the doctrine that labor also is fated. 



BIBLE TOPICS. 125 

FREE WILL. 

"That which a man is about to do is always a consequence of 
that which he has been, of that which he is — of that which he has 
done up to the moment of his action; his total and actual existence, 
considered under all its possible circumstances, contains the sum of 
all the motives to the action he is about to commit ; his life is a 
series of necessary movements; his conduct, whether good or bad, 
virtuous or vicious, useful or prejudicial, either to himself or to 
others, is a concentration of action, as necessary as all the move- 
ments of his existence." "Education is only necessity shown to 
children." 

Man is free to act, somebody has said, but with his hands tied. 
Men have about as much control over their character and actions, 
as they have over their body an$ its dimensions. We all know that 
our bodies take character and cast from agencies which were in 
actual operation long before we were conscious even of our own 
existence. We all know that after we are born, after we are, as a 
plant, set upon the earth to grow, very much depends upon the 
nature of the soil, much upon the climate, and much upon the 
common accidents of life. Over all these things we have little or 
no control. We are compelled to conclude that our bodies g*row up 
almost independent of our own exertions. The influence which we 
may have upon their form and character, we perceive, is reduced to 
a quantity innnitesimally small — perhaps so small that when we 
consider how much our own free will exertions, so considered, are 
themselves directed by nature rather than will, this influence may 
amount to nothing at all. We have only to look about, only to con- 
sult history, to ascertain the fact that men are mentally, morally 
and physically just what their mode of life and the nature of the 
country have made them. No effort of the will could give the poor 
savage of California that polish, grace and intelligence which char- 
acterize the higly cultivated citizen of America or Europe. 

Choice of action usually consists in the examination of the 
question, which is desirable? When facts are known there is really 
no choice about it, for, if you choose at all, you must of necessity 
choose that which, all things considered, you find desirable. Where 
there is no choice there can be no free action. Suppose a man is 
struck an insulting blow. He has his choice either to resent the 
blow or flee. But it would be impossible for a true coward to fight, 
for if he fought, he would be no coward. Hence from the very 
necessity of the case he retreats when a brave man would resist. 
A man at the stake may burn or retract, but it may be, and often is, 
that in the stubbornness of his nature he has no alternative. 



126 BIBLE TOPICS. 

Theoretically, no such thing as free action exists; practically, it 
does. Practically, we are endowed with a will which indicates 
what we must do and what we must let alone. I act, but I am 
unconscious of the motives which impel my action. I never feel 
my restraint till I undertake to do what I cannot do, what my 
nature will not suffer me to do. I think, but I am unconscious of 
the unsevered connections of thought, and I do not realize how 
impossible it is to have a thought not brought forward by some 
previous thought. As we do not perceive the limited circle in 
which we are confined, we believe we have the whole world to 
ourselves. Because we are unconscious of the power that moves 
us to act, we imagine we are free moral agents, endowed not only 
with power, but supreme power, not only with freedom of the will, 
but freedom to do anything we choose. Short-sighted and ill-taught 
man, how little there is that he himself can do ! Without God's 
help he could not raise his hand, and yet he talks about free moral 
agency! However, for diversion, perhaps such questions may 
answer as well as any. 

EVIL. 

The great question is, what is evil? Our opinion of what is- 
evil ana what is good may be best understood when we consider 
that what we condemn as vice, other people, less civilized than we 
are, esteem as virtue — even theft, adultery, child killing and the 
worst of crimes. 

Again, there is no evil unmixed with good, and no good unal- 
loyed with evil. A good to me is a harm to another. There is no 
wind so ill that it blows not somebody some good. Doctors live on 
the miseries of others, and ministers and undertakers thrive on the 
offerings that death brings them. Our worst conflagrations 
merely cause a redistribution of property and funds. Some fall by 
the misfortune, but as many rise by it. ■ War brings desolation to 
some, but prosperity and happiness to many more. A thing is good 
or ill according to the stand point from which it is viewed. Any- 
thing may be good and bad at the same time. 

Why say a man does wrong? What does that mean? He 
transgresses some law, some conventional rule, perhaps. Say he 
steals. It is not half so bad as we think it, to steal. We all steal, 
and we all would steal more if we could do so and be sure that no 
harm would come to us for doing it — at least our minds have a little 
tendency that way. Our high sense of honor turns out to be only 
well directed selfishness. Men are honest because they find it 
necessary to be so. Most of what we gain we prevent others from 



BIBLE TOPICS. 127 

getting. It is our cunning, our diligence, our prompt action, that 
has perhaps given us the advantage over them. All our gains are 
mere transfers from other men's pockets to our own. Our sharpest, 
shrewdest speculators are simply our most adroit pickpockets. 

Much of our crime is either good or bad as we look at it. Men 
are not half so bad as we take them to be, or rather they are not so 
much worse than other folks as we assume they are. The worst 
criminal is human. He has done perhaps what the best of men 
desired, but did not dare, or did not find it advisable, to do. It is 
the heart that fixes the crime. We condemn robbers, and yet there is 
not a foot of land owned on this planet that is not held simply by 
the right of conquest! Take our lands; where did we get them? 
Of our fathers. And where did they get them? Of the aborigines. 
They were the stronger party. They drove off the aborigines, or 
killed them, and now their children enjoy this peaceful inheritance! 
We derive our titles chiefly from such heroes as William the Con- 
queror and Alexander the Great, great robbers, who had might on 
their side. The beasts of prey are robbers and murderers in our 
sight, and how much less are we in theirs? 

We are in antagonism with everything in nature. The wind, 
the heat, the cold, the waves, the dust, gravity itself, all oppress us;, 
but must they be banished as evils? Everything that lives, not 
weevils, and worms, and rats, and robins, alone, everything that 
lives must devour. Shall they be exterminated as evils? Even God 
himself could not exist without a devil. There would be nothing 
for him to do. Somebody has asked, why God, being a Supreme 
Being, has not long ago killed the old devil and put him out of the 
way? and we answer it: Because God knows his own business 
better than we do for him, and understands full well the fact that 
the devil is just as indispensable to the pontinued existence of this 
world as God himself. 

The worst of criminals are perhaps as necessary to the contin- 
ued success and elevation of society as the best of men. The thief 
and pickpocket play their part. They at least keep us busy. They 
sharpen our intellect. They make us vigilant and active. I detest 
criminals, but I acknowledge their importance in the economy of 
nature. Without obstacles nothing moves. Without obstacles 
society would never progress. Shall we suppose God made any- 
thing in vain ? Does he not protect with as much care the most 
heartless robber as the most devout Christian? Is God himself not 
wise? Does he not understand our needs? If we were going to 
condemn and cast off what was hurtful to each one, there would 



128 BIBLE TOPICS. 

be nothing left in the world, for there is nothing done that is not 
injurious to some one. Is sickness not as necessary to our welfare 
as sound health? Do we not need plagues and storms to save us as 
well as to carry us to destruction? Is an insect a pest because in 
seeking to live it destroys our harvest? What shall the insect say 
of us, when it sees us grudge the very little that it asks for its 
daily subsistence? What would become of us if tlie very law which we 
apply to the feeble creatures around us were applied to our noble selves? 
Is it the golden rule that we are daily applying in our treatment of 
these poor devils? It is a Bible fancy, a Bible monstrosity, that 
men only have rights. We just begin to see it. Hence our laws to 
prevent cruelty to animals. Strange that the world had to be 6,000 
years old, and over, before we could come up to the understanding 
that God meant that other creatures should live upon earth besides 
Christians and Jews! 

In the eyes of God, it is evident enough that evil has no such 
meaning as it has for us. In a comprehensive view, everything is 
good. Nothing is plainer than that God orders the evil as well as 
the good. 

The bad man is just as much impelled by his nature and cir- 
cumstances to do wrong, as the righteous man is to do right. Then 
why should we hate and oppress him? jSTo, pity him, restrain him, 
educate him, elevate him, but do not hate and persecute him. 
What is indeed the difference between good men and bad men? 
The worst men have their redeeming exellences, and the best of 
men have but little moi'e. 

But shall we resist not evil? Certainly we shall. Resistance to 
evil is just as much fated and necessary as evil is itself. They are 
counterbalancing forces. We must have rights, and duties, and 
obligations. We must have rules and laws, or we ourselves would 
descend to the level of savages. Xearly all our rules grow out of a 
sense of our own weakness. Hence we despise cheats, and tricks, 
and stratagems. We may protect ourselves and secure ourselves 
from disease and starvation, but can do little more. Relentless 
robbers as we are, let us not be too unmerciful to those of our kind. 

Our weakness makes us good. The man who aids us most we 
prize the highest. We oppose criminals just as they oppose us. 
We simply counteract their movements. 

PRAYER. 

In prayer as an act of duty, as an expression of our innermost 
feelings, I sincerely believe, but not in petitions that imply that 
God is to bejmoved by them, not in those prayers which assume that 
God will do this or that for us at our own bidding. 



BIBLE TOPICS. 129 

True prayer comes not from the head but from the heart. 
Every man prays who has a wish, a fear or an enjoyment. If he 
does not pray aloud, he prays in his own heart. Every man prays 
who has thanks to utter or a wish to express. Prayer is not simply 
Christian like, it is manly. The true Christian loves to pray and 
feels the better for praying. It is a consolation to feel that we have 
some one on whom we can rely, some one who deserves our rever- 
ence, our gratitude, our worship. Prayer exalts and ennobles the 
man ; prayer raises him from the low and common things of earth 
to the consideration of things spiritual and eternal; prayer teaches 
us to know ourself ; prayer makes us humble ; prayer strengthens 
and revives the soul. Prayer does not affect God. It is from the 
reflex action upon ourselves that prayer derives its value. 

But I cannot too severely condemn as senseless and obsolete all 
praying to G-od for special interpositions. Why, if God were to be 
moved by half the insane demands of those who pray, the world 
would go to wreck quite speedily. God's plans are all interwoven 
and interlinked for the whole universe. To change one would be 
to destroy the whole. Besides, God is feelingless, inflexible, but he 
is just. I am happy to know that praying for special providences is 
fast disappearing. Scarcely any one now hopes to change God's 
purposes. No one thinks they can be changed by copious tears, 
much bending of knees and long talkings at prayer time. 

REPENTANCE AND SALVATION. 

In the prevailing Christian dogmas on repentance and salva- 
tion, there seems to be a vast deal of fiction. I do not think that 
any formal act of repentance is going to save a man. I do not 
believe in forms. Christ died to save sinners, but not in any mys- 
terious or unnatural way. He has given them his instructions; he 
has left them his example. Those who choose to profit by them 
may find in them ample means of salvation. Thoso who do not, 
must go the way of all transgressors and meet the fate of those who 
see the straight and narrow path but refuse to enter it. 

I am free to confess here that I do not adopt the prevailing 
Christian dogma on salvation. I do not make it a matter of theory 
and fancy, but treat it as a real and substantial thing, capable of 
being put into every day practice. I treat salvation for the world 
to come as purely a matter of speculation, but salvation for this 
world as something that we all need and can all use. He who 
teaches us how to live happily, honorably and successfully, and 
who finally prepares us to die nobly, is the one who is entitled to 
all our confidence and all our adoration. As such I worship Christ, 
our Savior. 



130 BIBLE TOPICS. 

I do not think that any one is going to get to heaven, or even 
pass creditably through this world, on any such basis as Christians 
set forth as the sole means of final salvation. People are asked to 
repent, be baptized, and thus be saved in a mysterious and formal 
way. I have no confidence in any repentance but that which makes 
of us better men and better women. I do not believe in death-bed 
repentance. There is no possible way by which we may escape the 
penalty of past transgressions. Christ, I apprehend, never 
intended to save men from the sufferings due for wrongs already 
committed. His was no ex post facto salvation. Christ died not that 
sinners mutt be saved, but that they might be saved if they would. 

But what a monstrous doctrine Christians teach in connection 
with this salvation dogma! A man's habits and character, his ways 
and works make no apparent difference in their estimation. By 
their theory men are to be saved not by what they do so much as by 
what they believe. They must be born again (no one knows exactly 
how), they must be regenerated, they must read the Bible, they 
must attend church and the prayer-meeting regularly, but above all 
things (and here lies the whole matter), they must believe. They 
must believe in the church, in the Bible, in the liturgy, in God. in 
Christ, in the devil, in angels, and all this. And they must believe 
not in accordance with the teachings of their own hearts, but 
believe precisely in accordance with the tenets of the sect to which 
they happen to belong. Without fulfilling these formal conditions, 
no one can enter the kingdom of heaven, not at least in a Christian 
way. But who supposes God is such a feelingless and exacting 
tyrant as this? Who supposes he wants us to go down on our knees 
to him and say amen, amen? Who supposes that God individually 
cares one particle whether we go to church on Sunday, or to some 
place of amusement? It is with ourselves that ice are dealing, not with 
God. It is for us to consider what we ourselves need, not what 
God needs. I really believe we ought to humble ourselves before 
God; we ought to thank him for his goodness; we ought to praise 
him for his holiness; we ought to attend church; we ought to attend 
prayer-meeting, — but not because God wants it, not because we are 
afraid of God; no, not from any such selfish and base motives as 
these, but because we feel that we ought to do so. It is a matter that 
lies between us and ourselves, between us and man, and in no sense 
between us and God. For our own good, our advancement, our 
enjoyment, we ought to be meek, we ought to be humble, we ought 
to be devout and reverential. I believe in salvation, not through the 
church, but through Christ, through his teachings, his example 
and death. 



BIBLE TOPICS. 131 

There are some strange things about the Christian theory of 
repentance. If Christians are correct in their views, the worse a 
man is, the more he has to repent for, and the better chance he has 
to be saved. Give a man a fair chance, and no matter what crimes 
he may have committed, nor how wicked his whole life may have 
been, if he has a few spare moments in which to be regenerated and 
receive the blessings of the priest, he stands a better chance of 
getting to heaven than any man, however pure, who happens to 
neglect those conditions. This is Christianity as it has come down 
to us for hundreds of years. I am so constituted that I cannot 
believe a word of such repentance and salvation as this. I am glad 
to know that such is not the voice of intelligent man to-day, such is 
not the ' ' Light of the Nineteenth Century. " 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Feb. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson P^rk Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



j ■**7 </f i r 



